Convenient Interference
by Snow Leopard Pasha
Summary: AU, M/M (don't like, don't read) The Prince of Egypt is kidnapped by their northern enemies...only to find things are not as they seem to be! A recent change in power, romance, betrayal...and underlying influence from the Gods. R/R please!
1. Chapter 1 - Captured!

A/N: Forgot this before, so I'm re-posting to add it!

Disclaimer: I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh, and I don't make any money off it! Assume this applies to the whole story, as I find it redundant to put it at the start of each chapter.

Warnings: This is boy-on-boy and M-preg; I won't be posting the graphic scenes here. For those who want those parts, let me know and I'll send you an alternate site where nothing will be edited out.

Updates: I'll try to keep up with 1 chapter each week, but sometimes, I may get 2 out at a time, assuming I'm in a good mood. I'm more likely to be in a good mood if I get a couple useful reviews, so please review!

Captured!

It should have just been a border-scouting mission where the most they should have had to deal with was some small-time bandits or other crooks. As such, they had only about twenty good men with them and their Captain, and they wore light, metal studded leather armor rather than full mail. Since men from the Palace were generally well-received by the villagers, they'd only taken enough supplies with them to reach the first village on their circuit, heading straight for the border area nearest their own lands. Traveling unhindered and in a straight line from the capital meant they'd reach the border region by dark if they set out shortly after dawn, which they had done, and the rest of their scouting could be done at a more leisurely pace.

They had just set up their camp at an oasis for the night when one of the men suddenly shouted, "Captain, come quick!" The group's Captain went around the side of the tent, wondering what was wrong—only to stop and stare for a moment before swearing vividly for well over a minute.

Other soldiers came to see—and all promptly bowed in shock and awe when they saw the frowning teenager with bronzed skin, crimson-amethyst eyes, and red-tipped black, spiky hair with surprisingly pale bangs. He dressed in a white commander's military robe, sleeveless and falling nearly to the knee, with archer's arm-guards, sturdy leather boots, and several regal decorations—a golden tiara, some armlets and bracelets, and the pendant of the Wings of Ra, denoting the Crown Prince of the land. It seemed he'd come with the intent to fight, as he carried a ready bow and wore both a good sword and a full quiver of arrows.

"We're going back to the Palace immediately, Your Highness," the Captain growled, not bowing like the other soldiers—why should he when he was the boy's arms trainer?

"I want to see my kingdom, and I want to meet my people, find out what's important to them! I don't want to rule blindly the way my father and grandfather did!" the Prince announced stubbornly. "I'll fight, too, and I'll help with the work in camp—you know I can, because you taught me how, yourself, Captain."

"No. It's too dangerous!" the older man glared at their apparent 'stowaway'. "What do you think would happen if you died, Your Highness?"

"I'm staying!" the sixteen-year-old announced. "Take me with you. That's an order!"

"What about your father's orders?" the Captain retorted.

"Irrelevant," the teen said simply. At the man's furious expression, the younger male elaborated, "He said I could leave the Palace in your company, and he didn't say anything more detailed, so until he finds out how I chose to interpret it, he can't actually say anything, and he can't blame anyone but himself. Now, everyone, get up and treat me like another of your number."

The men traded worried looks from where they bowed, then slowly began rising from their places as their Captain said, "Until tomorrow morning. You have until morning to convince me. If you can't, we're going back to the Palace, and I'm sending a different unit to do the patrol in my place. I won't have your stubborn streak cost my men and I our lives or our livelihoods, so the likelihood that I'll agree is almost none, Prince Atem. _Don't_ try my patience."

"Sir, there's a party approaching from the west!" a man, one of the two camp night guards called urgently. "They seem to have equal or possibly greater numbers than ours, and they don't hold themselves like any bandits _I've_ ever seen!"

With wide eyes, the Captain looked in the direction the shout had come from, then seized Prince Atem's elbow and called, "Everyone, prepare for a battle, just to be on the safe side, but don't attack first in case they're a party like ours from the other side of the border." He looked down at the boy as he began pulling him to the central location his men were gathering in and ordered, "Stay close to me, Your Highness. On my life, you _will_ live, you _must_ live."

"I'll fight, t—" Atem began.

"No!" the man replied, his tone urgent and desperate rather than furious. "You need to survive! If I thought you'd be safer running right now, I'd have a man take you on our fastest horse, but I know it won't help against _these_ people, enemy or ally. If they mean harm and see a runner, they'll be after you regardless."

Atem didn't have time to reply as the riders reached them—and began cutting them down mercilessly. As the soldiers jumped into action against the cloaked, hooded men, total chaos erupted, and the Prince froze for a moment as he just stared at the battle scene and death in front of him. It was his first real experience with battle, with death, seeing the blood of both his allies and enemies on the ground. With metal clanging and shouting and screaming sounding all around him, he suddenly had no urge to stray from the Captain's side.

The man was an impenetrable wall, so Atem decided—loudness and gore aside—he still had to help, so drew his bow and began firing arrows. He saved several men that way, but as he looked back at the Captain—

His head flew, and blood splattered.

In the Prince's mind, that scene would remain frozen for a long time, even as the same blade which had just killed his teacher and friend took aim at him. Mechanically, mind and body still in a state of shock, he lifted his bow—

It was cut in half, and the sword had to take time to reverse. He couldn't even see who was holding the blade, just the weapon itself, and he'd lost the last little bit of strength he'd had. As the blade came at him, one of the other soldiers jumped in the way, getting cut down much like the Captain, but with a blood-curdling scream of pain as he fell.

All at once, Atem yelled, "No!" It was enough to unfreeze him as pure fury and sorrow took over his mind, and this time, when the sword headed for him, he was able to draw his own and block it.

Tears of fury and pain ran silently down his cheeks as he fought—fought and killed. He was blind to everything except killing the ones who had attacked them for no reason at all. He fought with a fury even he hadn't known he possessed until then, and he was so filled with high energy and emotion that he didn't feel any minor injuries he got from the attackers' blades before he took their lives. When the men began withdrawing from him, when they began pulling back, he pursued them, intending to finish what he'd begun as soon as he drew his sword.

Instead, he felt something collide with his leg, throwing him off-balance just enough to miss his current target—only for the man he'd just missed to catch his wrist. With a sudden yank, he got his hand free and slashed, cutting the man down, then—

Sudden impact with his waist—

He stabbed downward onto the man—

Hands, many pairs of hands—

He couldn't use his arms or legs—

Another impact with his chest—

This time, he was knocked to the ground, where sudden pain burst from the back of his skull to make him dizzy and the air was knocked from his lungs.

As he looked up, he saw a blade about to come down on him as men pinned down both his arms and legs and the one who held the sword was hovering above him, putting all his weight on the teen's hips and waist. He closed his eyes, expecting to die in the next moment.

"Stop! Don't kill the brat!" a voice suddenly called out sharply.

"But he—!"

"I know what he did, but look at the pendant he's wearing," the sharp voice said. A long silence fell as Atem opened his eyes to see the man above him lowering his sword in shock. The speaker then added smugly, "Egypt's Crown Prince is infinitely better for us alive than dead, you see?"

"Kill me now or I'll kill you!" Atem growled at the man above him. "The others—"

"They're all dead, Your Highness," the speaker replied in a dryly amused tone. "Take a look around and see for yourself, spit-fire."

Slowly, because his head still hurt, Atem turned his head to look around—and all he could see from the ground was a sea of dead bodies, gore, and blood. Other than the cloaked, hooded men, not a soul was alive or standing, and he could see most of the soldiers' bodies from his position.

He was alone.

"It was rather careless of your father to send you from the Palace, though, wasn't it, young spit-fire?" the same man as before asked, only for the teen to meet his eyes.

"He doesn't know," the teen answered quietly, _feeling_ cold, pale, and drawn. "Well, he's probably looking for me by now, but he doesn't know I came with the scouts."

"Shouldn't he notice sooner? I pity you for having such a neglectful father," the man snorted—he didn't 'pity' a thing, his tone made that clear.

"I often skip morning and noon meals," Atem replied, then his voice went hard as he said, "And don't say things you don't mean. You don't pity a damned thing. If I'm supposed to be your hostage, don't bother with any niceties. I don't need them."

"Oh?" the man asked with a raised brow and a smirk. "Well, then, to dispense with the formalities, regardless of your rank or your skill, you still single-handedly killed almost as many of our men as all your soldiers combined did, so you have to be punished. I'll let a few of the guys you injured rough you up a bit on our way to our Palace and our King—I'm sure Majesty will be quite pleased with the gift we're bringing back with us, besides the horses and any other valuables your group had on you."

Atem's eyes widened when he heard what they were going to do, even as the man motioned a few others towards him—ones he remembered having cut as they pulled back from him. They began beating on him, but he still couldn't move, pinned down as he was, so all he could do was take it and grit his teeth against the pain. If it had been just a general beating, that would have been bad enough, but they aimed for spots they knew would cause pain, but which wouldn't endanger his life—lessons he had also taken. There were certain places and ways to hit in order to kill, certain others to cause non-lethal pain, and still more which would maim others. These men deliberately used the second to their greatest advantage.

When they finished, his wrists were tied behind his back and he was picked up and thrown over someone's shoulder.

It didn't take long for them to start moving after that, and he was too exhausted and sore to bother trying to shift his position, or even to ask where they were going. Then again, it didn't especially matter to him where they were headed, since he'd know when they got there. It was too much effort to think about something like that when so many other things were occupying his mind, and it was all so overwhelming he didn't even want to think about any of it at all.

There was no way to stop it, so he finally gave up and let himself fall into unconsciousness...

A&S

By the time he woke, the sun had risen fairly high in the sky, and he was no longer draped over the man's shoulder; rather, he was being held against the man's chest, wrapped in a cloak and with his wrists still tied behind him. His mind was numb, his emotions dulled, so he wondered vaguely how long it would be before he saw his home again, but _felt_ nothing about it.

A bustle of people surrounded him, so he turned his head to look around—they had entered a northern city—the chill during daytime told him it was further north than the Inland Sea. Since the man wasn't wearing his cloak, Atem could see the icon he wore, and knew it as a land's where they were so war-like they never made friends or alliances, only attacked and took what they wanted. In that regard, they, the Nihons*, were no better than bandits—or worse, since they used their organized military to act as thieves. The realization of where they were answered most of his questions and told him something else as well—he'd be tortured before he ever made it home.

Not long after, when it was approaching noon, they entered the Palace, revealing to the Prince that they had reached their capital with him in one night. _How?_ Even crossing the Inland Sea should have taken longer than a single night...

When the one carrying him dismounted, the larger man slung him over his shoulder again to carry him, but it wasn't until they were well inside the Palace before another man slipped the cloak off the teen. Finally, a large set of doors was thrown open and the man from the night before announced loudly, "We have returned, Majesty!"

"What, already? Why?" a bored, commanding, surprisingly _young_ voice asked. "And why did you bring a body back with you?"

"Not a 'body', Majesty," the man from before smirked, and a moment later, Atem was pulled off his carrier's shoulder, put on the ground facing the Throne (he only caught a glimpse of it), and was forced to kneel and bow his head by hands on his shoulders and one gripping his hair. The one in his hair then pulled his head up by said hair, making the teen wince as the man went on, "We found an interesting gift."

Opening his eyes, Atem saw a young man only a little older than him gazing at him with sapphire eyes which transitioned quickly from bored to curious to recognition to great amusement. He had paler skin than Atem's and fairly short, brown hair with a rather tall stature and who dressed in dark pants and shirt under a long, white, sleeveless device like a robe. Northern people dressed with the intent to protect from cold rather than to release heat, so the teen understood why the crowned brunet on the Throne dressed in so many layers which covered him so well. A sword was at his side.

Shouldn't the King of Nihon have been older and more gruff?

With a smirk, the apparent ruler of the northern kingdom said, "A gift indeed." He then motioned, and Atem's hair was released, but the hands stayed on his shoulders, even as the 'King' asked, "Where's the rest of the party? Looting?"

"This little spit-fire killed about half of them himself, Majesty," the other man replied.

A long silence fell as Atem met the King's startled gaze, then the older teen asked, "What happened to have put you in such a position?"

"Egypt's Prince knows archery as well as swordsmanship, and he turned out to be a real force in that battle—just with his sword, he killed almost a dozen men, and it took five of us just to pin him down. He's been quite well-behaved since then, though, so his skill may have been something from the heat of the moment," the man said.

"Do you agree with that assessment, Your Highness? I'd hate for your skills to be belittled like that," the young King said to the Prince.

"Don't lie to me," Atem spat, causing a shocked silence to fall. "You don't give a damned about me besides how much money you can get from my father for returning me alive. My 'skills' don't mean anything right now, regardless of what they are or are not, and I have no interest in playing pointless political games with a kingdom of bandits who have no honor, anyway."

"_We_ have no honor?" the King asked darkly. "You have a lot of gall to say that to me in my own Throne Room. Do I need to remind you whose mercy you're at? I could refuse to give you medical care and have you thrown in the dungeons like any common criminal for behaving that way. It's in your own interests to behave, Prince Atem."

For some reason, the words made Atem feel like he should laugh, so he gave a small one and asked, "It's in my interests to behave when I'll be tortured and thrown in the dungeons, _regardless_ of my behavior?"

"What? How insulting—" the young King began to say, his expression furious.

"That's what I know from other political prisoners your people have had here from my land," Atem cut him off coldly. "Even if they did everything they were told to, they were tortured brutally, and they aren't fully sane, even today—I know three of them personally! If you're going to torture me, then be open about it, because I have no intention of cooperating—at least that way, there's a reason I'll be able to associate with whatever horrors you decide I should suffer."

"You little—" one of the men around him began, and he braced himself for a blow he knew would hurt by the way he'd spoken to the King.

Only for the King to cut in sharply with, "Stay your hands, all of you!" Slowly, Atem looked up at him, and was surprised to see there was no anger in the King, just a terse expression as his lips pressed together in a thin line.

"But—" one of the men began, different from the one just before.

"No 'buts'! _I am not my father_, and I _forbade_ torture!" the King replied in a cold, sharp tone, making Atem's eyes widen. The other teen then sat back on his Throne and pressed the tips of his fingers from each hand together as he said, "I suppose most of the Prince's current injuries came from you disobeying that order? I should have seen it sooner. You'll be justly punished once I'm done with Prince Atem," the King informed the other men coldly. His eyes then went to the other teen's as he said, "My father did indeed relish in such cruelty—I, myself, have suffered physical torture at his hands." The words made the Prince's eyes widen again.

"I'm _not_ him, and if you behave, you'll be treated like a guest here during your stay, with only the restriction of staying within the Palace unless you have my express permission to leave it. You'll be given care for your injures and for any illness or injury you acquire while here, any lessons or entertainment you want, a proper room and food. If you choose not to behave, you'll be staying in the dungeons, but you shouldn't come to any harm unless you go out of your way to _cause_ it. That's _my_ rule, Cousin. Will you choose to behave?"

The King had used the term 'Cousin' to reference another of royal blood, not a family relation, and in spite of himself, Atem had to look down in uncertainty. Could he believe those words from the Nihon King? He then looked up and asked, "How do I know I can believe you?"

"I suppose you can't until you see for yourself," the King answered calmly. "I became King too recently for anyone else to have met me, and unlike your father, who had you at his side to meet dignitaries, I was never allowed near him on his official business. My name is Seto. Yes, it sounds decidedly like one of your people's names," the other teen said slightly wryly. "But 'Set' in your pantheon isn't exactly good, so maybe that's why my father liked the name enough to give it to me."

Despite the answer—something which actually put the Prince at ease for the honesty of it—Atem was still suspicious. "You realize that isn't a point in your favor, right, King Seto?" Of course, his reply was ignoring the fact that one of his closest friends was named 'Set', which meant he could relate the name to something good, as well.

The King snorted and rose, moving down to Atem and kneeling in front of him. "Do you feel well enough to have a sword match with me? I want to see your skills for myself, and you apparently need more time to decide you should behave, so we'll use up some time—and some of your energy—with some fun." The King had taken the moment to seize one of the soldiers' swords, which he used to cut the binds at Atem's wrists, then put the sword in the other teen's hand as he drew his own and rose.

Looking down at the blade for a moment, the Prince asked, "Why should I waste time and energy on such a pointless activity? What terms are you applying to this?"

"I'm not applying any, since I just legitimately want to see your skills," Seto replied dryly. "What would you suggest, since you seem to need a reason? Well, you _are_ injured, so I suppose it makes sense you'd need a real reason to put out so much effort in your condition. I can't imagine they made those wounds pleasant for you."

"If I win, I'm free to go home. Now, without a ransom," Atem replied, looking up.

"We'll just drop you in the middle of the desert if that's your term," the other teen answered with a raised brow. "And what do _I_ get if I win?"

"I'm a desert resident—you can drop me anywhere and I'll make it home safely," the Prince said dryly. "And if you win, I'll behave. Properly."

"...That's redundant, and isn't much of a reward," Seto snorted.

"No, I mean it as two independent terms. I'm good at _looking_ like I'm behaving, only to suddenly disappear—just my 'behaving' means I'd take the first available chance to escape. Or to try to kill you, whichever came first. If I'm 'behaving properly', I won't do anything like trying to escape or trying to kill you," the younger teen explained calmly. "I _will_ cause you problems if I _just_ 'behave'."

After a pause, the King held his blade to Atem's throat and said, "Not just 'behave', but _obey_, and only _my_ orders, no one else's, not for any reason. _Then_ it's worth my while, Prince Atem."

That time, it was Atem's turn to be silent, then he replied, "Within reason. As long as you don't order me to take or cause harm of any sort, not to myself or to others around you or me."

"Very well." His sword went down and he shifted into a battle stance as he smirked at the amount of freedom he'd been given by the Prince under that term, and he knew the Prince was aware of it, too.

In the next moment, he'd launched an attack—only to be blocked on the sword he'd passed to the smaller Prince. With a bit of a smirking grin, he attacked again, knowing he'd enjoy himself for a change.

A&S

A/N:

*Nihon = the actual Japanese spelling of 'Japan', used as a deliberate play on words for the purposes of a fictional story taking place on another world. To clarify, however, 'Nihon' is actually based on the Medieval European setting, not the historical Japanese setting, names being used aside.


	2. Chapter 2 - Enemy Palace

Enemy Palace

Atem lay in his 'new' bed that night, staring up at the ceiling as he wished for the mounds of cushions he usually lay on to sleep. The northern beds were hard slabs of wood or rock, and some had sacks of bird down on them—this one had such a pad, but it was well-used, so it wasn't soft like the cushions in his own room. It was also colder than he was used to, so he was grateful for the thick blankets on the bed, and equally thankful he could at least look out the window and see the same stars.

None of that stopped him from remembering how the fight had ended...

_He'd been using everything he had to win, because it was his only real chance to go home unharmed. Assuming the King kept his word. His body hurt, but he gave the fight his all, and he was so, so close to winning—only to find what should have been his last strike being deflected on the tip of the King's sword, and in the next moment, Seto held his sword wrist firmly in his free hand. The other held his sword to Atem's throat. It was clear the Prince had lost._

_When he looked up, however, he was surprised to see how shocked and pale the King was, even as the older teen said quietly, "If you had been in peak condition, you would have won. However, as things stand, I won, so you'll abide by your agreement, won't you, Prince Atem?"_

_Atem couldn't really say 'no' after having been the one to place and modify the terms, so he said, "Yes. I'll behave properly and obey—within reason."_

_With a nod, the sword went down and Seto let go of his wrist, seizing the sword in the other teen's hand and throwing it back to its owner. "Then, the first thing you need is medical care. My healers will see to your wounds while a room is prepared for you to rest in, and your first priority is to heal. Once you have, I'm going to have you join me in my weapons training, so plan for that around whatever other things you may like to do."_

_Moments later, Atem was being whisked away by female servants to see the Chief Healer, Kisara, who recognized his injuries and took care of him._

It was like a blow to know he'd been tended equally as well by the northern King's Chief Healer as he would have been by his own, but it was a true fact he couldn't hide from, so he just sighed as he turned his thoughts to another matter of concern.

What kinds of orders would he be given, and why did his room have three doors?

One door was the hall door, so it was perfectly understandable, but the other two were both on the same wall. Those were to the right of the hall door, but he didn't have the strength to get up and find out what they were, and some servants had been waiting on him to take care of him while he was injured. He'd gotten good food and drink, and been given some scrolls and papyrus books written in his own language to read while he otherwise just rested. The rest of the fairly large room contained a large wardrobe, a stack of boxes with a drape hanging in front of it meant to hold under- and sleeping garments and trinkets, the bed (in the corner to the far left from the main door), a window, and a desk and chair. All the walls were flat with the exception of the wall where the two doors were, where about a quarter of that wall next to the outer wall came several feet into the room and the rest was in its proper place. One door was in the normal section of the wall and the other was in the section several feet in. The only thing he knew was that no such walls existed in his own home.

It was still strange to have been taken care of so well by his 'enemy', but the thought of an 'enemy' made him remember the battle, killing, his blind rage—which hadn't been so 'blind' after all...

And suddenly, he burst into tears and began sobbing as he rolled over in his bed to try to muffle his crying.

Everything was just too much, and he had to let out that feeling, so much so that he really knew he'd never be able to stop it until he ran out of tears to cry. First and foremost, rather to his surprise, was how afraid he was of himself for the fury which so easily discarded the lives of others. He'd been trained since he could walk to be able to kill, but until then, he'd never been forced to, and it was surprisingly painful. How could he have lost his control so thoroughly so as to chase and kill men who were running from him? Yes, he'd lost people he'd cared about, but...didn't those he'd killed have people who cared about them, as well?

A hand on his shoulder made him start and look up through his tears—at Seto! The other teen didn't say anything, just sat beside him and put his arms around him to hold him while he cried. His doing so just added complete confusion to his reasons to cry, so he didn't bother to try pulling away from the young King.

Some long time later, Atem drifted into sleep, the warmth at his side comforting...

A&S

Waking groggily and knowing he'd cried himself to sleep, the Prince slowly assessed why someone was in his bed with him—and sat up in concern.

A look at the young King sleeping at his side with an arm around his waist showed him they were both still fully clothed, at least, so maybe Seto had just stayed there because he fell asleep while Atem had been crying. Surprisingly, the younger teen felt more calm and refreshed than he had, and his thought processes were working as well as they ever had, rather than being dulled. The pain hadn't gone away, not by a long shot, but it was within manageable levels, so he could work with it. A look around the room showed him that the door in the normal part of the wall to the side of the room was sitting ajar.

Carefully pulling the arm off his waist, he got up quietly and went to check the door—only to look into a room which he was sure was Seto's, given the white and purple color scheme and the overall regal look of it.

Why was there a door linking...?

Atem's questioning thought cut off as he turned flame red and went to the desk to sit and read until Seto woke.

When Seto awoke, about half an hour later, Atem asked, without even looking at him, "Is the room on the other side of the door yours?" He felt the King's eyes on him intensely, but there was no answer, so he sighed and asked, "Why? I'm not your wife."

A silence followed the words, then a sigh. "There are people here—quite a few of them—who don't like being told they can't abuse the hostages anymore. I have to keep you close to me so they don't try to harm you while I'm not around to make them regret it." Another pause followed before he added, "Personally, after the shape you were in last night, I don't think you have a right to complain too much." Atem could hear him sitting up and standing. "Anyway, how do you feel, mentally and physically?" Seto finally asked.

He set the book down and turned to look at the other teen, saying, "That...even though I have been training with weapons for a long time, that was my first battle and my first time killing, and my first time being taken hostage. It was just...too much."

To his surprise, the other nodded and said, "I thought it was something along those lines, and all of that was the only reason I won, as much as I hate to say it. Subconsciously, you were pulling back from the thought of possibly killing again."

After pausing to consider that for a minute, Atem went on, "And as much as _I_ hate to say it, your healers took care of me as well as my own would have. I'll have recovered within a week with care like that."

Frowning, Seto said, "No one can heal from wounds like that so fast."

Giving his head a shake, the other teen said, "No, it's just because it's me, and healing—good, proper healing—takes to my body like a bee to nectar. My body drinks it up and allocates it quickly and efficiently, so I heal twice as fast, if not faster, than anyone else getting the same care." He then paused for a moment before asking, "By the way, what do you want me to call you, King Seto?"

"In public, that'll do. In private, you can just call me 'Seto'," the King replied easily. "I'll do the same—it's 'Prince Atem' in public, but just 'Atem' in private."

"That's..." Atem began, going a bit cross-eyed.

"Informal?" the man asked with a smirk. Atem eyed him suspiciously, so he shrugged and said, "Join me for the morning meal—I eat in my own room. You'll see why I'd rather call you informally then. Speaking of which, it should almost be time, and you'll never hear the end of it from the servants if they see me come out of your room this morning. I'm going, and we'll talk more during and after the meal."

With that, he breezed out of the room, shutting the adjacent door on his way. A minute later, the hall door opened and several servants came in to get him out of his sleeping clothes, wash him, and dress him in clean, northern clothes. In his case, however, he was dressed in white pants and shirt with a deep blue, sleeveless robe over it. One of the healers even came in to check on his injuries and reminded him not to do anything too strenuous for the next little while. He was finally allowed to go, only for a servant to come from the adjacent door to call him to join the King for the morning meal—and to tell him how lucky he was for being invited to such a private affair.

When he stepped into the room, however, he was shocked to see a younger boy of about eleven years old sitting beside Seto at a small table which had been placed in the middle of the room. The boy had dark eyes and long, flyaway, black hair, but otherwise looked a lot like Seto; he dressed in blue pants and shirt with a red device like a tunic-vest* over them. It looked like he was already putting food from the platters on the table on his plate. Besides the chairs for Seto and the boy, there was one other, across from them.

At that moment, Seto looked up, saw him and invited, "Come sit over here, Atem." As he spoke, he motioned at the free seat, so the other teen sat, even as the black haired boy turned to stare up at him in surprise. "This is my younger brother, Mokuba," the King said, nodding at the boy. He then looked at his brother as he tipped his head at Atem and said, "This is the Crown Prince of Egypt, Atem. He's staying here for awhile, so you'll be seeing him around a lot, Mokuba."

"Yeah, I get that part, Big Brother, but why's he eating with us, why are you calling him just by his name, and why's his room the one connected to yours?" the boy asked shrewdly, and Atem had to chuckle.

"Well, that's one thing you two have in common," Atem said when Seto looked at him in confusion. "I'd have asked, too."

"I told you already, too many people here _like_ torturing people, so I can't leave you alone," Seto replied, snorting as he did. "But sadly, I don't have as much time for Mokuba as I'd like, and too many people here have proven they aren't trustworthy, so I'd like you to look out for him when I'm busy, Atem."

"Ah," the Prince murmured, suddenly understanding. "You don't like to show a lot of your emotions, but it doesn't mean you don't have them. I'm not sure if I should be scared or appreciative." At his wry tone, Mokuba snorted, spraying some of his drink on his plate as he did and earning a glare from Seto at the same time. The glare then turned on Atem.

"Don't you have a brother, too?" Seto asked with a deep frown.

Atem fell silent for a minute, then nodded and said, "Yuugi and I ordered our teachers to give us our lessons at the same times so we'd be able to spend our time outside our lessons together. It's not so easy as that when you're a ruler, since your kingdom and court decide for you when you work. I'll look after Mokuba as much as I can, Seto. Though, I daresay he'll be the one looking after _me_ at first." His wryly amused smile made Seto sigh in relief as Mokuba bounced in his chair.

"Does that mean I get to show you around? Do I have to call you 'Prince Atem', or just 'Atem'? Have you been to anywhere in the Palace, or is there anything you especially want to see?" the boy asked eagerly. "I want to meet your brother! Is Prince Yuugi going to come here, too?"

Atem laughed and held his hands up in a surrender motion, so Mokuba stopped asking questions. "Yes, you can show me around. Right now, I'm injured so it's probably best to avoid weapons training places, but I'd like to find the library, and I want to study magic, since my lessons there aren't complete—Yuugi is better at that sort of thing than I am. You can call me 'Atem' if you like, and _everyone_ calls Yuugi just by his name—he orders all the servants to call him just 'Yuugi', too. I don't know if he'll come here sometime. We still have a lot of details to work out."

"Aw...Okay," Mokuba agreed. "So, after breakfast?"

"You have to take your inscription lessons first, Mokuba," Seto answered dryly, and the younger boy looked positively horrified. "When you're done, come back to Atem's room to show him around."

"He can't miss a day of that?" Atem asked curiously.

"Unfortunately, even though he's good at it, he hates it with a passion, and misses far too many days of lessons as it is," Seto replied with a sigh of long suffering as Mokuba made a face. "A new guest isn't cause to just not attend his lessons, and you need some time to rest, anyway—he won't be done until the noon meal, so it'll be after the meal when you get your tour."

The Prince turned his gaze to an embarrassed-looking Mokuba, his brow raised as he asked, "Do you know when Yuugi last missed a lesson?"

"...When?" the boy asked, looking a little worried.

"Three years ago, when he was too sick to get out of bed, let alone leave the room. He was so sick he almost died, and it was the longest three months we ever lived through," Atem said quietly, and Mokuba's eyes went huge. "But, the Gods saw fit to grant our Chief Healer the power to save him, and since then, he has never missed a day of anything, even things he didn't like or want to do. After nearly being taken to the Land of Death, everything meant so much more to him, because it all meant he was still alive, even if it was to feel like he didn't like to do something. It was better than feeling nothing, being unable to do anything, barely existing. Even _I_ miss more lessons than him, and I only miss them a few times in a year."

After a pause, Mokuba looked down at his plate as he bit his lip, then asked tentatively, "So...Not liking something also tells you you're alive?"

"Sure it does. If you're dead, you can't 'like' or 'not like' things related to this world we live in now. Unless you'd _prefer_ to be dead and just not concern yourself with this world at all? That's certainly an option, one my great uncle acted on. But you have to understand that, if you live _here_, this is the world whose laws and rules you have to live by, while if you live _there_, it's the laws and rules of _that_ world you have to follow. Which do you prefer?" Atem asked shrewdly.

"Okay, okay, I get it! I'll go to class!" Mokuba finally burst out, jumping up and running out.

Seto sat in his chair, chuckling, as he said, "Well done, Atem! I may have made a concerted effort to bring you here sooner if I'd known you could have such an effect on my errant brother."

"Thanks but no thanks," the Prince sighed, shaking his head. "The only reason I could do it is because I had that very real experience. Without that, it just doesn't have the same impact."

For a moment, the young King was silent, but then he said, "Atem, I was just wondering if you were ever told what was likely to happen if you were captured by an enemy, or at least a non-allied, kingdom."

"I was only told I'd be ransomed off for the kingdom's wealth if I was captured. No one said anything more to me," Atem replied, suddenly feeling nervous. "Why?"

With a sigh, Seto told him, "In other words, they only told you what would be the case if bandits caught you, not another kingdom. There's a few _significant_ differences between the two."

"Like?"

"Land, for one. Civilian population. Infrastructure. Government. Politics and trade, or foreign politics. Atem, you should have been told you wouldn't be traded off for gold if an enemy nation caught you so you'd be prepared."

After a silence, the Prince's eyes widened and he met Seto's gaze worriedly as he asked, "So...what _are_ you going to trade me off for?"

"...It's going to look more like keeping you alive and unharmed rather than ever giving you back to your people. Unless you'd rather Yuugi come take your place here so you can go home?" Seto asked, his gaze showing he knew Atem would refuse.

Sure enough, Atem burst out, "I'd never let Yuugi suffer in captivity!"

"I didn't think so," the King answered. "If it was entirely up to me, I would let you return to your people as long as I had secured official documents stating the terms of your release, but my other ministers are too...cynical to think those documents would be obeyed without you as insurance. It's the reason I was awake late enough last night to hear your—distress. Basically, my own ministers will kill me themselves if I give you back to your people directly, and if they kill me, not only will _you_ be tortured for the rest of your life, but they would also torture Mokuba, and a lot of my own people. That's the position I'm in, Atem, and I can't get out of it. I was right to ask for your obedience if I won the match yesterday, because now I _need_ you to be. Stay calm, behave, as you gave your word. It's going to take a lot of work and manipulation for me to find a way to return you to your people, so you just have to wait and live here quietly until then."

Slowly, as the Prince tried to wrap his brain around the new information, he rested his elbows on the table and dropped his head into his hands. Finally, he asked in a strangled voice, "What kind of agreement _could_ you make in order to allow me to return home under conditions like your ministers gave you?"

"I don't know yet, but the first thing I have to do is secure our borders and some decent trade. The negotiations for that will take a month or more alone, even with you here to force their hand. You'll have to meet and talk with your own people, so they'll have to come here...and while I know you got here in less than a night, the reality is that the trip from this Palace to yours takes a month. My father set up several portals which lead directly to and from certain key positions, hence the reason you got back here so quickly. Your people can't activate those portals, so they have to take the usual route, but my messenger to them can reach them in less than two days by using the portal. Yes, I'm deliberately going to make it look like we planned this, and would have attacked the Palace if you hadn't conveniently left it just then. I won't have any fault fall on you by making them think you would have been safe if you'd just stayed in the Palace, since that would cause problems on both sides," the King explained.

"But...it's true, isn't it? I would have been safe if I'd stayed in the Palace..." Atem asked mournfully. "Basically, what I did was put my own people on the losing end of a bunch of deals which are going to hurt them...It would be fitting if they cast me aside for being so foolish."

"And then what?" Seto asked quietly, making the Prince look up at him slowly. "I know about you and your brother. For all he's wonderfully kind and intelligent, he's Priest material, not Pharaoh material—he legitimately can't take the role, because his own personality won't let him enforce unpleasant rules, not on anyone. He doesn't have the power or force of will to make others obey. If your kingdom loses you, they lose their rightful ruler. My father would have loved that outcome, but Atem, we aren't desert people, and we can't see anything but sand when we look at it. For us to take that land, or even to destroy it, is pointless and dangerous, because all those people will either become bandits or refugees, and I have no doubt your father and brother would make sure they knew _we_ were the cause of it. All the surrounding lands would be in danger if yours, the strongest of them, fell."

"How could they blame you when I pretty much handed you my head on a platter? And even as it is, you're going to wind up destroying us with trade deals, and probably with that border, even without knowing it. All of that will be _my_ fault."

"I don't want it to be _your_ fault, I want it to be mine, and I want to keep your land there to guard that southern region, Atem. A strong land means more stability for all its neighbors, too. Tell me about your lands, what you can feasibly produce in what kinds of quantities, and what areas on your northern border you need to keep. Give me that information so I can handle both my ministers and your ambassadors in a way which will keep you strong enough to maintain what's needed. Instead of saying 'it's my fault, so I should be discarded and die', say, 'I have knowledge and power even here to help my people, so this is what I have to do.' And don't show your weakness so easily, least of all to an 'enemy' and a 'captor'. If it's me, it isn't such a problem, but to my court, don't show them this, or they'll make you regret it."

Closing his eyes, Atem sighed, then drew in several deep breaths and nodded. "Should I over-compensate so your ministers think they're getting a deal when you set the border?"

"Typically, that would be best. With trade, base it on your worst years, not the best."

"...All right. Have you got a map and some paper for lists?"

A&S

A/N: for anyone who doesn't know, a 'tunic-vest' is a sleeveless device which falls to the knee and has a tie or button-up front, generally worn closed. It's different from a tunic, which has long sleeves, a closed front, and falls to the knee, and from a vest, which is sleeveless, falls only to the hips, and has a tie or button-up front.


	3. Chapter 3 - Strange Order

Strange Order

In the end, Atem spent most of the morning with Seto, working out borders and some basics for things they could trade, and in what quantities. In the latter, not only did he have to take into account his people's production, but what they already traded with others—which opened up a new aspect of trade he hadn't actively thought of before, that of trading to the northern countries goods which they barely used in their own and took only because it was something cheap no one else needed. They had two of those which would actually allow his own people to gain by dumping it on Nihon, a point which made Seto's lips twitch as he said Atem was just lucky his northern neighbors legitimately needed those goods.

Most of the meeting was taken up on making lists and refining them to say their worst years of produce and how much was already going elsewhere, which left how much. Once they had determined tradeable goods and how much was available for trade—papyrus in the form of reed goods as well as paper, cotton, and some foodstuffs as well as stone, metal, and other raw materials—they made a final list of what was left to trade in the end, once everything else was accounted for. Since a number of those products came out of the northern 'disputed' zone of Egypt, Seto understood perfectly why taking too much of that land would destroy the southern land, so between Atem's over-compensation and Seto's understanding of what came from where, he figured out a way to leave most of that territory in Egypt's hands, taking only certain parts where his own Nihon farmers could grow crops in fertile soil which went unused by the desert people, transporting back to their kingdom with the portals.

Finally, the Prince went back to his own room as Seto left to arrange things he needed to do after the noon meal. He hadn't thought he would need to use any of the free time to rest, but he wound up having to, because the meeting had been so intense, even in an informal setting, that he'd exhausted himself. It was his first time experiencing his father's job first-hand, not just watching from the sidelines, and up until then, he had never understood why his father always seemed so tired after—but now he knew. The amount of data he had to search his mind for, call back from lessons long since past, apply to active situations, and re-calculate with other, similarly trying items to recall, was enough to give almost anyone a headache.

Without realizing it, he'd fallen asleep, only to feel a hand shaking him awake as a child's chuckle came to him. When he opened his eyes, he blinked in surprise and asked, "Mokuba? What are you doing here?"

"It's lunch time," the boy replied in amusement. "You were really tired. Did you sleep for the whole time since breakfast?"

Slowly, Atem sat up—only to see a table and food being set up in his room. His eyes went back to the boy at his side as he said, "I spend most of the morning working out trade and border agreements with your brother. He seemed pleased by the results, so I guess we made progress, but...I have new respect for my father's job."

Mokuba nodded and said, "Yeah, it's a lot of work. I used to think a ruler just sat there and gave orders to people, but then he gave me a trade agreement he was making with the island nation in the Inland Sea. He made me actually do his job to work out, calculate, and determine the quantity of goods we could trade, of what kinds, and for what things our people needed. My head hurt for days after working like that for three days. If you did an agreement like that in one morning, you're really, really good at it, Atem—now I know why you're the one who was sent with a party to make the agreements."

The Prince snorted at the words as he muttered, "Who was 'sent'?" A moment later, before the boy could question him, he raised his voice to normal levels and asked, "So, did you decide on how you're going to conduct the tour this afternoon?"

"Ah, yeah!" Mokuba suddenly grinned energetically. "We can go around from the gardens, to the Chapel, and from there, we can cross just the edge of the training grounds to reach the Palace University, and the Libraries—we have three—are right near there! From there, it's over to the main Palace, where all the council and ball rooms are, then past the catacombs—I don't think you'll want to actually go in there—and to the Mages' Wing, where one of the Mages can give you lessons! Well, you probably won't get lessons today, but one of the Mages will probably be happy to teach you, so you can arrange it."

"Sounds good," Atem agreed. "You put a lot of thought into it, it seems."

"Yup, I sure did! I got to work on it during my lesson, and my teacher even helped me. When we did it in class, I even did it as a list and a diagram, and even a map with it so I knew all the routes I needed to follow, and my teacher helped me read up on all the places! He thought it was fun, so he was happy, and he said to tell you 'thank you,'" the boy explained.

They then moved to the table to eat, even as Atem thought the 'thank you' was more for getting the boy to go to his lesson, rather than whether or not the lesson was 'fun', but decided not to tell Mokuba so. After eating, the younger boy began showing the Prince around, following the path he'd decided on during his lesson, and even telling Atem details about the places the older teen was sure the boy hadn't known before then. In other words, Atem's arrival there had actually gotten the boy much more interested in learning about his own home so he could show someone around and tell them important things about it.

Rather than returning to his room for supper after the tour, Mokuba told him they were eating in the Great Hall with everyone else in the Palace—that was the rule for both local and foreign nobles and visitors there—so led the way to it. Atem wasn't sure where he would be placed at the table, but thought it would be with the other foreign nobles. As he stepped into the room with Mokuba, however, Seto appeared in front of them, even as others were filing into the room and finding their seats. Many people were looking at them oddly, but the young King ignored them.

"Prince Atem, since you are the next highest ranked noble here besides my brother and myself, you'll be sitting beside me, to my left. I'll announce your presence and rank before we begin our meal—you know how to handle such an introduction, I trust?" Seto asked in a cordial tone which made his brother blink in surprise.

"Yes, I know how, King Seto," Atem agreed a little tiredly. "I'm just not sure why you're introducing me this way, like I was sent here by my people as an ambassador."

"So my own people can't lay a hand on you, and so the foreigners will treat you like one of their number," Seto replied in faint amusement. He then raised a brow and asked, "I take it you haven't gotten much rest? How did your tour go?"

"Prince Mokuba was...very thorough. It took the whole afternoon, but I enjoyed it, regardless, and have a fair idea where to find the things I'm looking for now," the Prince replied, smiling faintly in spite of himself.

"Let's take our seats, then," the King said, and led the way to them.

Everyone else was standing by their seats and waiting for the King to take his seat, so Atem and Mokuba followed him to their assigned seats. Seto sat down and motioned with his hand, so everyone else sat, even as plates of food and jugs of wine found their ways to the tabletop.

As the last items were being placed, Seto rose and rapped on the glass goblet in front of him with his fork, producing a loud chiming which made everyone turn to look at him. "Before we begin, I have one announcement which only came into effect as of late yesterday. The young man at my side is His Highness, Crown Prince Atem of Egypt, who is representing his people in my court currently due to unexpected circumstances." Atem rose and gave a regal nod to the others at the long, large tables. "As such, there are times where he may join trade discussions, and other ambassadors of their people are free to speak with him about their concerns. Due to his rank as Crown Prince, Prince Atem has every right to sit at my side, and I will take it as a personal offense, as will the whole of Egypt, if any harm should come to him." At the last, clear warning, his eyes were on his own people, and the foreigners saw it as well—they knew what the people of the northern kingdom were like. Seto then sat down again.

"Thank you for having me here, King Seto. Given some of the bad blood between our peoples, I hardly expected such hospitality upon my arrival, so I am duly impressed. Hopefully, my presence will bring both our peoples many benefits," Atem replied, keeping his reply short and sweet, giving a small nod to the King, who returned it, then sitting. Mokuba was staring at the Prince with wide eyes, but most of those at the table responded to the short speech by clapping more than 'politely'.

After that, everyone began eating, and Mokuba asked eagerly, "How—and when—did you prepare even a short speech like that, when you had no idea you were coming to the Great Hall to eat or that you were going to be announced?"

With a little laugh, Atem said, "That's a requirement of a Crown Prince. In short, I was trained from a young age on a basic reply to an official announcement, and on how to edit it for the circumstances. I came up with that in the time it took us to get from the door to our seats because three quarters of it has been driven into my head since I was three." His eyes then went to Seto and he asked, "But King Seto, when more of my people arrive, how are you going to cover up the fact that I'm a political prisoner?"

"A...political...? No way!" Mokuba gaped, turning betrayed eyes on his brother.

"Unfortunately, my court won't let me release Prince Atem," Seto said to his brother. "Not at this point, anyway. And I already know how I can keep your technical status from the foreigners, as long as you and I are the first ones to meet with your people—to be aware of them—when they arrive. When it's closer to the time they'll be due to arrive, I'll have my most trusted men on the lookout for them. The messenger should have left before the noon meal, so in about a month. Unless my messenger returns and tells me they're taking longer than expected to choose their delegates."

"Three days," Atem sighed, making Seto frown in worry and Mokuba frown in confusion. "It'll take them three days to choose the people, then longer to prepare for the journey and what they'll expect to find here. Uncle Akhenaten and Chief Healer Isis will be in the number, possibly the Priests Shada and Karim, the former more than the latter. There will be others, but those are the most likely to lead the group."

"Why do they need three days for that if _you_ already know, and why does your Chief Healer have to come here?" the King asked in confusion.

"It isn't for the leaders they need the three days, its for the rest of the party. From their view, they're going to be heading into unfavorable conditions in enemy territory in order to find a way to retrieve the second most important person to the kingdom, not to make a trade agreement. They also know Isis is the best at active battle healing as well as the fact that they'll be expecting me to have been tortured like the others who found their way into Nihon hands prior to now. They'll go out of their way to find people who don't look impressive but who are some of their strongest in all ways to fill the remainder of the party, hence the need for three days."

Seto sat back in contemplative understanding, then smiled wryly and said, "Now I begin to understand how your people can make use of a sheet of sand and hard, barren, rock. You are quite the shrewd bunch, aren't you?"

"Also, there's one other thing Isis and Shada can do which others can't—when they work together, they can open a 'communication hole' with anyone, anywhere. It isn't a portal, but it'll allow written documents to change hands, and let them and me talk with my father directly. When they arrive is where your _real_ trade and border deals start," Atem informed the King, who blinked in surprise.

"...If this is what your people are really like, I'm glad of the terms you, yourself placed on that match, and the fact that you were already injured when it took place," Seto finally snorted in amusement. "Then, there's a good chance it could take them less time to arrive here than a month? They must have a method to speed travel."

Giving his head a shake, the Prince said, "They have one, but using it would reveal our trump card. No, they'll take the long route and walk it."

"Trump card?" the King asked with another frown.

"I'm not going to tell you that, on the pretext that my people will be harmed if I do, and our terms were that anything which would bring harm to others, I didn't have to 'obey'. I mean that literally, because flaunting it once before destroyed nearly a quarter of our population. It's an emergency measure, not something to be displayed," Atem replied, crossing his arms over his chest.

For a moment, Seto frowned, then his eyes widened and he asked, "You mean your trump card was the reason for the far south's 'purge of the land of demon-spawn'? It wasn't just because they were angry and starving?"

"They were never 'angry and starving' in the _first_ place, they just used that as their justification to the other nearby lands who helped us close that border," the Prince said with a sad sigh. "No, what they were was deathly afraid, and they didn't care if they lived or died as long as the 'desert demons' died. But, they chose to destroy our defenseless population, not those who actually made them feel such fear. That's why the trump card now stays hidden from all but the few who are capable of activating it."

"...Fine. I have your promise to behave, so that will be enough," Seto agreed. "If this is all true, I can't fault you for keeping it hidden."

The rest of the meal was fairly quiet, and as they were finishing, a few of the other foreign visitors asked Atem if he'd be able to spare some time to talk with them the next day, so he asked if Seto needed him for more discussions. The answer was 'no', so they made arrangements to meet after the morning meal to talk, and it wasn't something the Prince minded, since those were from one of the allies to his people, and were probably not so sure about the reason Atem was there.

Finally, he was able to go back to his room—Mokuba showed him the way while Seto went to more meetings—and take a nap. He'd been intending to sleep for the whole night, not wake up after awhile, but a strange, somewhat familiar noise, woke him. He kept his eyes closed at first as he listened to it, and realized it was water falling on stone, so opened his eyes to look in the direction it came from. It was...coming from the indented area of the room, where the other door was?

Suddenly, the door opened and Seto stood there, looking at him with a raised brow, even as the sound of falling water stopped. A minute later, the older teen said, "Atem, since most foreigners don't know this, these areas like this in rooms are one of two things—a room for bathing and relieving oneself, or a storage room. In this case, it's the former. And it would be best if you had a bath."

"Let me know when you're done, then," the Prince replied in agreement—or what he thought was agreement.

"No. You're bathing with me. No sense in wasting good water in a large tub," Seto returned with a smirk. "And if I have to, I'll order it so you have to obey. After all, this isn't hurting anyone, so it falls under the category of an order I'm allowed to enforce."

Flushing red, Atem began, "But...I..."

"Shy? Never bathed with another man before?" the King taunted with a smirk.

"No, I've bathed with pretty much all my male relatives before, but...never with a stranger..." the Prince admitted, turning more red than he already was.

With a snort, the young King replied, "Then come in here, and get used to it, because I want you to bathe with me."

"...Why?" Atem asked quietly as he slowly forced himself to rise.

"Because I feel like having the company, and it's past Mokuba's bed time."

The reply seemed unlikely to the smaller teen, but because of his own agreement to the terms if he lost the duel, he slowly made his way to the door and let Seto pull him into the room. He could see a spot clearly meant to relieve oneself near the outside wall, and the large indent of the tub had a wooden panel on one side; the wooden panel would allow the used water to drain out. Currently, the large indent was filled with steaming, bubbly water—something had been added to the bath to create the bubbles.

Without really thinking about it, Seto began undressing, and had slipped into the water a minute later, while Atem had only taken off the outer robe. When the Prince paused there, Seto sighed and asked, "Do I need to help you undress?"

"No!" Atem burst out, face so red he was nearly giving off steam.

After that, he finished undressing quickly, noting how the older teen was staring at him expressionlessly. Normally, that wouldn't really have made him uncertain, but Seto wasn't just 'watching' him, his gaze was literally traveling over his body as though he was assessing and judging it the way a rider assessed and judged a valuable horse. It didn't leave him feeling good, regardless of the lack of expression—or maybe _because of_ the lack of expression, so he couldn't tell what he was being looked at for or the other's conclusions.

As he slipped into the water, Seto asked, "Are your people all the same color as you are? I'd thought at first that your face and arms were so dark from working in the scorching sun, but your whole body is the same color, even parts which would always be covered."

With a little sigh, Atem said, "We're all at least bronzy like this, but many of our southern provinces are quite a bit darker. We don't work during the hottest part of the day as a rule, so we couldn't get it from that, and our stories tell of how we came to be this color due to bearing the mark of the Gods, of Ra in particular."

"...I thought it was Amen Ra, or Amen?"

At the words, Atem almost died, and held a hand to his head as it began hurting.

"Only to non-native Egyptians. _We_ call him Ra, and your people have a great misconception about our Gods if you think 'Amen' and 'Ra' are the same entity. No, Ra is the Sun, the Chief of the Gods, and Amen is the 'Trickster', the one who tests our loyalty to our Gods. We have a function in the ranks of our Gods which causes them to 'associate' together as pairs—Amen and Ra are often paired, being the two sides of the same coin, light and darkness, hence the term 'Amen Ra', but they are two separate deities, and we worship them as such," the Prince informed him.

"...I see. I'll keep that in mind, then," the King agreed, and Atem nodded.

After a silence, the other teen reached over and placed his remarkably pale hand against Atem's upper chest, below his collarbone. The darker of the pair turned to look at him in mild confusion, until Seto lifted his hand—by sliding across the Prince's chest—and said, "It's rather soft, despite your trained muscle. How do you keep it from getting rough?"

Suddenly, Atem felt like laughing as he held his hand to his head like it hurt again. _What_ kind of conversation was he _having_? It really _was_ like a rider looking for a new horse had found a way to ask the horse itself its pedigree, but somehow, even though it felt strange, it wasn't so bad. A glance showed Seto glaring at him, so he got his laughter under control and reached over to do to the paler teen's chest what had been done to his. And blinked in mild surprise.

"You're right, your skin is rougher," the Prince admitted as the young King looked taken aback. "We have special oils and ointments we rub into our skin regularly, usually after bathing, to help keep our skin from drying in the heat. They absorb in overnight, and last for two or three days, until the next time we apply it, but because we do it so often, we can go for several weeks without applying it by my age. Even Yuugi could go for almost a month without an application."

With a little huff and nod, the taller teen reached over and ran his fingers through Atem's hair, then withdrew it and asked, "Do you use the same oils on your hair?"

"No," the darker teen snorted. "That would make our hair greasy and shiny, not soft and silky. Some people have very coarse hair, but most of us have very fine hair, so when we wash it, we follow the wash with a creamy mixture with aloe and chamomile in it. There's a few other ingredients, as well. When we rinse that out, this is the result."

"Give me a list of what to look for, and if we don't already have some, I'll have someone go buy some," Seto decided abruptly. "Take those bandages off so I can wash your back. Afterwards, I'll have you return the favor. And from now on, unless I say otherwise, you'll be joining me in the bath."

"Why?" Atem asked curiously as he began unwinding some of the bandages around his body.

"Because you're easy on the eyes."

For a moment, the Prince froze. He then burst out laughing so hard he fell against the side of the tub. Two strong arms abruptly pinned him to the rim, making him start and stare up at the King, who was looking down at him from only a foot away. The older teen's gaze was somehow shadowed and heated in a way Atem didn't recognize.

"You're insulting your host," Seto told him.

"Sorry..." the Prince murmured. "But _no one_ has ever used such a pathetic excuse to get something from me. That's not even _logical_. So, what's your _real_ reason, Seto?"

Slowly, the other teen sat back from him and shifted to settle against the rim again, even as he said, "I actually _meant_ it. Nearly everyone here who 'could' join me is either skinny enough to be a stick or meaty enough to be a horse. You've got a nice balance between the two, slender and toned—I had no idea your people were so attractive or well-balanced. Even Mokuba counts as a stick right now, even if that might change in a few years, when he starts becoming an adult."

"...Do you actually _need_ someone 'attractive' to bathe with you?"

"Not 'need', but want. Very badly. This room is too dull and boring to have a decent bath in otherwise. I hear your people decorate such rooms, but ours call that 'frivolous'. Since I can't have physical objects, I have to have a person as decoration."

"...'Decoration'...?" Atem muttered in a disgusted tone, then sighed. "Fine."


	4. Chapter 4 - Adapting

Adapting

In his first week there, Atem actually met with most of the foreigners, who had _all_ found it odd how he was there without guards. For the sake of the elaborate plan Seto was attempting to keep him safe, he modified his story of the attack to make it 'bandits', and his 'rescuers' had been Seto and some of his men. When they heard he was the only survivor of an attack, most of them offered respect, condolences, and prayers for the dead to Atem, and didn't question him any further, even as he explained the King had sent a message to Egypt to bring a new party to the Crown Prince's side.

His injuries healed well, just as well as he'd thought they would with a skilled healer's help, and in that week, he had fully recovered—a point which also helped the foreigners feel better about his presence there. Another point which helped them was when the young King got his hands on some traditional, regal, Egyptian clothes for Atem to wear, something which also helped Atem feel better about Seto's plan. Not long after that, the King had indeed found some of the oils and soaps the people of Egypt used, ones of very good quality, like the Prince would have had in the Palace, but none of the kind meant to soften the skin after a bath.

His lessons in magic continued under the guidance of a Mage named Ryou, who had spent several years training at the Palace in Egypt, so understood the peculiarities of their version of 'magic'. Most of his days, other than those lessons, he spent either with Mokuba or with the books in the libraries. Once, Seto called him into a trade meeting, and _everyone_ seemed shocked when he settled a trade issue to both sides' satisfaction. They were all beginning to see why Egypt had such power in the area, when their leaders were capable of stepping into such a situation and resolving it. At night, other than the times when the King ordered them to bathe together, Atem was left alone to rest, and he was sleeping well. Most morning and noon meals he spent with Seto and/or Mokuba, and all evening meals were in the Great Hall.

That night, as they were finishing their bath, however, Seto asked, "Is it true your injuries are fully healed?"

"I'm not wearing any bandages, am I?" Atem asked in mild amusement.

"That doesn't mean anything for your internal injuries," the King replied shrewdly.

"They're all healed. Your healers admitted they'd never seen someone heal so fast, but I have fully recovered, so tomorrow, I want to start my weapons practices again," the Prince explained. "I've looked up all your trade and 'acquisition' records—I can't believe you kept looting details—so I have a pretty good idea of what I'm dealing with here now, and don't need the Libraries quite as much anymore."

Blinking in surprise, the taller teen asked, "Is that how you were able to help with the trade deal so well? Because you knew the details of the previous trade records?"

"Partly, and partly from my lessons at home," the darker teen agreed. "Well, is there someone you'd recommend to spar with me, besides yourself?"

After a pause, the King said, "Frankly, I want to keep you to myself, but if you really want to spar—something I'll have a Hell of a time convincing my ministers to allow a political prisoner to do—you'll have to give me something in return."

With a frown, Atem asked, "What, like a better trade deal or a change to the border we already discussed?"

By then, they were dressed in their nightclothes, so Seto said, "Sleep in my bed."

First, Atem froze. Then, he paled. Finally, he flushed and gasped, "_What_?"

"I don't mean to do anything carnal, but just to sleep," the King answered calmly, smirking. "I like your expression right now, though."

"...Is that an order?" Atem asked quietly. "Because I would rather give up my sword practices than go as far as you're suggesting if it's just an exchange for that."

"Do I have to make it one?" the taller teen asked curiously.

"...In other words, you've already decided I'm not allowed to say 'no'," the Prince assessed in a quiet voice, feeling betrayed as he looked away. "What am I to you if you feel you have to play games like this with me?"

"Did it feel bad to wake up in my arms and the same bed a week ago, or were you just embarrassed because it, like so many other northern customs, was so new to you?" Seto asked, tipping his head to the side. "I'm not asking you to do anything which will hurt either of us or anyone around us, so if you have issues with the terms of the match now, you should have realized how much liberty you still allowed by modifying the terms as you did. It can't be changed now, so...obey your own terms, and obey me."

Since Atem really had no choice, he followed the King into his room and to the bed, but again, he hesitated before getting in. Seto resolved the issue by reaching up and catching his wrist to pull him down and into the bed, putting the smaller teen's back to his chest and wrapping an arm around his waist. Thankfully, as the older had said, he wasn't going to do anything, and it turned out to be true because the Prince heard his breathing even out into sleep very quickly.

The darker teen, on the other hand, lay awake for some time before finally getting used to the contact and drifting into sleep—unlike Seto thought, this situation and the one on the first day were quite different. Accepting comfort when in distress made it easier to have contact with another person, at times even a well-meaning stranger, but this time, the contact itself was causing the distress, putting it on a whole other level. When he finally slept, it was because pure exhaustion took him, not acceptance.

A&S

In the morning, when he first opened his eyes, he had to blink in surprise. The King was sitting on the bed at the smaller teen's hip, one of his hands gently caressing Atem's face as he smiled gently at the smaller. A moment later, the hand was withdrawn and the expression vanished, but the paler teen didn't move from where he sat, just shifted slightly.

"Sorry, did I wake you?" he asked in mild amusement.

"Not really," the Prince replied, looking away from Seto as he sat up. "Can I go back to my own room now?"

"Go ahead. It's better if the servants don't see this, anyway."

"...If it's better for them to not see it, why are you making me _do_ it?"

"Don't be difficult."

"It's a legitimate question."

Since the King's only answer was to rise and move over to a bookshelf he had in his room to find something, Atem sighed and rose as well, heading back to his own room to collapse on the bed. He didn't have long before the servants came, so he just hid his face in the pillow to cry silently for awhile, not knowing what else to do—or _could_ do.

He'd stopped by the time the servants came, and not long after, he steadied himself to see Seto again—for some reason, he didn't want Mokuba to know something was wrong. Something told him the boy would confront his brother, given how the younger hated having serious things kept from him, and somehow, Atem felt it would cause trouble for the boy to try to help him. And he had no doubt the younger Prince would do so, since he _liked_ Atem enough to stand up to his brother on the Egyptian Prince's behalf, even as things stood.

The morning meal progressed well, and Atem really thought Mokuba hadn't noticed anything—but at the end of the meal, the boy said excitedly, "Come with me, Atem! You don't have any other plans this morning, right?"

"No, I don't," Atem agreed. "Where are we going?"

"It's a surprise!" the boy grinned, then caught his hand and pulled him up and out of the room as Seto gave a light chuckle. They turned down several halls, ones Atem knew somewhat, but not as well as he knew the way to the Libraries and Mage Halls.

Then, suddenly, Mokuba stopped.

"Atem, what happened between you and my brother last night?" the boy asked quietly, turning to look at the older teen with a serious expression.

Blinking rapidly, the older teen asked, "Why do you think something happened?"

"My brother and you are both acting slightly different. A normal person wouldn't notice, but...He got something he really wanted, and it was at your expense, wasn't it?"

With a deep sigh, Atem's eyes slid closed as he wondered what had given it away. He'd thought he'd kept it hidden, but apparently not. "It's better if you don't get involved in this, Mokuba."

"Why? I can talk to my brother to make him stop—" Mokuba began.

He stopped when Atem gave his head a shake and opened his eyes. "When I was first brought here, we had a duel. The terms were that, if I won, I was allowed to leave, but if I lost, I had to obey him...and I lost. He's very good at manipulating the terms to not cause harm, so as long as he's not causing harm, even if I don't _like_ the order, I have to obey it. You can't change that or make him relieve me of those terms, since those terms are also the only thing he can use against his court so they can't hurt me. Interfering will cause more harm than good."

The smaller boy's mouth fell open as he stared at Atem with wide, shocked eyes for over a minute. Then, he slowly asked, "What do you mean, those terms are somehow protecting you from his court?"

"I was already tortured once before we got back here. Too many of them like to torture people, and even if Seto gives the order for them to stop, they won't—to them, a political prisoner is there to be tortured. Because I have no choice but to obey Seto, I also can just be kept out of their reach, and they can't complain, because there's _no_ way I can do anything to cause trouble and there's no excuse they can create to be able to torture me without the King's approval. If I refuse to obey or you make him lift that term, I'm fair game for them again, because there's no tie on me anymore," the older Prince explained to the boy in front of him.

For another moment, Mokuba went silent, eyes seeing something far away, but then he looked up and asked, "Did you actually say what _kind_ of harm it had to be? Because if it's just 'harm' in general, my brother broke the terms of your agreement, because he's causing you mental and emotional harm, even if it isn't physical."

For the first time that day, Atem really felt like smiling, even as he said, "Thank you, Mokuba. You and Yuugi would get along wonderfully. In the meantime, I'll try talking to him again, but please don't do or say anything to stop what's happening."

"...It's not fair," the boy pouted.

"As my father liked to say, 'life isn't fair.' That's the world we live in," Atem sighed.

At that, Mokuba just caught his hand again and kept pulling him—and soon, they came to the practice courts, where the boy led him to two people near an equipment shed by one of the outdoor fields. "My brother said Prince Atem needs sparring partners now that he's healed, and said you two would be a good start, Captain Mai, Major Ryuuji," the boy said to them, even as they stared in surprise.

And Atem realized Seto had still chosen to fulfill his request, even though the King had been forced to make his own request into an order.

A&S

That evening, Atem paced his room nervously for awhile before getting up the courage to go to the door and knock on it before opening it. Seto was just pulling on his nightclothes, but called, "Come in, Atem."

As such, the darker teen closed the door, then stepped further into the room and said, "The terms were to not 'cause harm _of any sort_' to me, or to make me cause it to others. Right now, what you're doing is causing me harm, and causing Mokuba harm in turn, because he knew right away something was wrong."

Seto froze, then commented, "Mokuba didn't say anything to me. And _you_ aren't being caused harm, you're just nervous."

Sighing, the Prince asked, "How can you just assume it isn't hurting me to force me into a kind of contact I don't want under conditions where it isn't needed? As for Mokuba, I told him he couldn't interfere because it would cause more harm than good if he did the things he'd be most likely to. Do you want to call him here and ask him?"

After a silence, the young King finished settling his nightclothes in place, then faced Atem and said, "Get out."

Something in his tone made Atem afraid, so he backed into the door, then pulled it open quickly and fled back into the other room. He dreaded what would happen the next day, feared for his safety, since he knew, even if he'd won, he'd lost. Seto would break the terms, himself.

Or so he thought.

The next day was the strangest one he'd ever had since getting there. In the morning, he wasn't called to Seto's room, but the meal was brought to him in his own. When he left the room to go see Mage Ryou, he was left alone, and the young man greeted him as though nothing had changed. Again, he had the noon meal alone in his own room, and found one of his sparring partners from the day before waiting for him when he was done—he was invited back to practice with them, since he was so skilled they had to work at it to beat him. They rarely got to go full-out on a noble, so they felt it was good to fight him for that alone, since he was legitimately skilled, not a pampered brat of a royal. Nothing had changed there, either. When he went to the evening meal, he still sat beside Seto's seat, but the King wasn't there, so a very confused Prince Mokuba led the meal. That night, nothing happened.

And the next morning, Atem was brought the meal in his own room again. The servants were now confused, too, and for some reason, Atem's heart hurt.

When he went to his magic lesson, white haired Ryou paused, then asked, "What's bothering you, Prince Atem?"

Shaking his head, the Prince said softly, "Let's just start the lesson."

Silence fell, then Ryou put a rod on the table and said, "Turn it into a snake."

Placing his hand on it, Atem reached for his power—only to find it sliding out of his grasp. His eyes widened for a moment, then he lifted his hand and sat in the seat at the table, dropping his head into his hands and elbows resting on the table. He was in turmoil, and there was no ignoring it now. There were tasks which could be done without a calm soul, but transformation wasn't one of them, so the teacher had known exactly what he was doing—either he was in good enough condition to have a proper lesson or he'd be caught in the attempt to ignore the problem.

"...Do you know about the terms of my duel with King Seto?" he asked quietly.

"Prince Mokuba told me yesterday when I asked him why you seemed put out."

"Yeah...but now...after I confronted him under the term to not cause me harm of any sort, he told me to get out, and all day yesterday, and again this morning...I haven't seen him at all. He changed all the patterns he himself forced me to get used to..."

"If you were indeed being harmed, you should be happy, and in _better_ condition now than you were before."

"...What do you mean?"

Ryou sighed and said, "Prince Atem, the King never hurt you at all, did he? He just asked something of you your own people wouldn't have, something you weren't familiar with doing—and something you didn't actually dislike, let alone hate. Until you face that fact, you won't be able to calm down."

"But he was making me sleep in his—" the Prince began to say in a plaintive and half-horrified tone—only to stop and flush red as he realized what he'd just said to someone else.

"I'm a Mage trained by your people, including those like Priestess Isis and Priest Shada, Prince Atem," Ryou said dryly. "I was reading enough about the situation from you to know the direction things were moving in slowly. And I also know a part of you was already accepting it. You're crushing that part because of something. Be honest with yourself and your own feelings so you can think clearly again. It obviously hurts you a good deal more to be apart from him than with him, even in such a situation, so don't you think you owe it to yourself to find out why?"

Slowly, the teen drew in a deep breath, then let it out in a sigh. Finally, after repeating the action several times, Atem realized, "What scares me the most...what makes me so uncomfortable...is that he's getting me to do those things just for fun, just because he can...But because of how little I can read from him, I know I can't find out unless he tells me, and he won't...I've already asked him, but he won't give me a reason other than just something stupid, like 'I'm easy on the eyes'..."

To his surprise, Ryou snorted and said, "You _are_ easy on the eyes, Atem. In your line, there's some truly good blood, and you show it all—there aren't many people as legitimately attractive as you. Unfortunately, that leaves you in the position of wondering if the other person's interest is real or based solely on your looks."

"...In the King's case, I don't even think it's that. My looks never even entered the equation, and I don't know what direction he wants to take whatever interest he has in me...but I think...I just want to know he isn't just playing a game for the sake of playing it. Him cutting everything off...just makes me think it was a game, and when I stopped playing, he threw a temper tantrum..."

"If that was the case, I can safely say you would be in the dungeons being tortured by his court by now."

After a silence, Atem suddenly rose and left the room, heading back to his own—to the room adjacent to Seto's. From there, he stepped into the King's room, which was empty at the time, and thought about what to do from there. It would be noon at least before the taller teen would be back, and he'd probably have Mokuba with him...The thought made him return to his own room and go into the hall, where he found a servant and asked her if Seto would be back in his room for lunch. He would, so he asked if she could tell Prince Mokuba to please come late to the noon meal. As puzzled as she was, she still agreed, so Atem went back inside and to the King's room, where he spent a bit of time looking around the room.

He was actually surprised by some of the things he found in it, but almost died when he found the jewelry box and saw one of the pieces set aside in its own compartment. It looked like it had been designed for Atem, not Seto or Mokuba, and was a perfect blending and union of the two design styles of their nations. It was a beautiful necklace; the base was gold threaded with silver and over an inch wide, the gems placed in it were amethyst and garnet, set in such a way so as to form wings with trails of almost-flame. The reason he knew it was designed for him was because it was a choker, a band tight around the neck like many of his own people wore, and which he'd never seen anyone anywhere else wear, and it had been made to fit his neck and his alone.

By then, it was almost time for lunch, so he put the band away, put the box back where he'd found it, and went back to stand at the door jamb, to the hinged side. Not long after, the door opened and the young King stepped inside with a tired sigh, closing the door and not realizing anyone else was there. He pulled off his royal insignias and threw them on his bed, still not aware of Atem as the Prince took several steps towards him, steeling himself for what was likely to be another confrontation.

"You're avoiding me," the smaller teen suddenly said.

Seto froze and spun to face him, showing shock for a moment before closing off all feelings and saying in reply, "You don't want my company. You made that abundantly clear the other day."

And suddenly, Atem realized what the biggest problem was. With a snort, the Prince said, "This is why I hate most other nations. They seem to think that if someone says 'no' to one thing, they mean 'no' to everything, and if a person says 'yes' to one thing, they mean it for everything. _Things don't work that way, Your Majesty_. I said 'no' to sleeping in your bed, _not_ to having your company the _rest_ of the time."

For a long time, the King didn't answer, but then he asked, "Why are you here?"

"I _need_ to know you're not just playing some kind of game with me because you can—_that's_ what was hurting me the most. All you've done is give superficial reasons for things you want from me, and you're shielded enough that I can't read you to _know_ what your reason is. Seto, _tell me why_ you're _really_ asking such strange things of me!" Atem burst out, finally releasing something he knew he needed to.

Rather abruptly, the King was in front of him, arms wrapped tightly around his back and waist as the Prince found his face buried in the cloth of the teen's upper chest. "It's not a game. I want you at my side. I feel...calmer, just having you here...Those two nights we were together were the best I've ever slept. Atem...I can't explain it any better because I don't know how...but I...even though I _will_ keep my word to find a way to return you to your own people, there's a part of me which _doesn't want_ to return you."

After a silence, the smaller teen sighed and relaxed against the pale teen, and said quietly, "If you had just _told_ me all this instead of making up excuses, the other day wouldn't have had to happen." Drawing in a deep breath, Atem added, "...I'll try to get used to sharing your bed...just...let everything else go back to normal..._please_..."

"...All right," Seto agreed quietly, then let out a shaky breath. "Atem...Thank you."


	5. Chapter 5 - New Dimensions

A/N: This chapter is a little shorter due to editing out of inappropriate content for FFN. Let me know if you want to read the longer version.

Also, a reviewer pointed out, and I agree he's right, that I should clarify something about the Kingdom of Nihon. This is an entirely fictional world, and while Nihon uses Japanese-based names, the style of kingdom it's designed after is actually Medieval European, so don't picture historical Japanese stuff while reading!

New Dimensions

By the time the servants got there, let alone Mokuba, everyone was thoroughly confused. No one saw the King and Prince standing together, but they saw how the two seemed more than just 'content' in close quarters now, and they saw a pleased expression on the King's face while the Prince seemed relieved. Mokuba, especially, was puzzled by the change, even as the servants finished laying everything out and left the room quietly, murmuring about the shift in the two teens.

"So, what happened?" the younger Prince asked worriedly. "Did you force Atem to do something he didn't want to, anyway?"

Seto, biting into some chicken, almost choked, so had to spit it out, even as the older Prince chuckled and said to the King, "Told you he noticed."

"Point taken," Seto agreed after taking a quick drink to clear his throat and mouth. He then looked at Mokuba and said, "We came to a mutual agreement this time. You don't have to worry."

"Apparently, yes, I do!" the boy glared at his older brother. "Especially when _you_ start acting strangely for breaking the terms of your duel."

"Mokuba, this time it really was something we came to a proper agreement on," Atem told the youngest of their number. "I had to sort that out just to be able to focus on my magic lessons, so it wasn't something that could wait, and if I was in agreement, it wouldn't have any effect on my mental state."

"I thought Mage skills worked no matter your mental state, and just ran the risk of escaping from you if you weren't calm," Seto commented with a puzzled frown.

"For normal Mage skills, that's true, but some Egyptian-specific skills can only be used when you're calm enough, since they take too much focus to be in turmoil," Atem explained. "And because my teacher also trained in Egypt, he knew I was in no condition for a lesson—and made me do one of those very tasks which he knew I wouldn't be able to do as I was. For example, transformation. Even the most basic ability—and to us, it _is_ considered 'basic'—of turning a staff into a snake is impossible when you're too distressed—and distracted, by default."

"...Transformation...?" Seto asked in surprise as Mokuba just gaped at him. "Atem, there's nothing _basic_ about that! How extensive are your people's transformation skills if you talk about it like it's _normal_?"

"Hmm...First, it _is_ 'normal' for us," Atem snorted, then held his fork out in front of him. "Normally, it has a time limit or a distance limit—or both—and the two conditions for the time limit are either 'for a set amount of time', like half a candle mark, or 'until one's spiritual energy is exhausted'. In my case, the only 'limit' I know about is until I run out of power to use to maintain the transformation—in other words, it's temporary and the object will turn back to normal eventually." A moment later, the fork shifted and became a small Nile bird which flew around the room before returning to land on the rim of Seto's goblet. "This kind of transformation is 'basic'. Everything the fork does while it's a bird is very real, though, and won't go away just because the transformation ends—if it gets eaten, it won't exist anymore to change back, so the fork would just be gone, too. A complex transformation is to turn a living being into something else, and _this_ is why the terms were for me to 'behave properly'."

Atem rose and closed his eyes, only for Seto and Mokuba to just stare at him in shocked awe. His whole form changed, slowly shifting as they watched, seeing how his hair turned deep, deep red, grew very long, and took form in a ponytail, his face shifted to turn soft and delicate, his toned muscle vanished into slender, delicate limbs, and his body shape changed. He grew breasts and hips as his waist narrowed, and he even grew a little shorter as his skin took on a creamy tone rather than bronze. While he wasn't extravagant with the changes, it was more than enough for absolutely _no one_ to recognize him unless they had seen the transformation personally. Then, when he opened his eyes to show he was finished, they saw brown, not crimson-amethyst.

"...Atem..." Seto began. He then asked, "Did you really, physically change your body? If so, why to a woman's?"

With a smirk, the Prince/ss said, "Because turning into a woman is the easiest way to just not get caught. And yes, this is real for right now. See?" To both Seto and Mokuba's surprise, the other teen picked up the King's hand and placed it on one full breast, letting him squeeze it for a moment before Seto withdrew his hand.

"So...can you become with child if you're like that?" the King asked, still entirely shocked by seeing the transformation.

Atem had to think about that for a moment as he closed his eyes and returned to his normal form, then sat. "I don't actually know," he admitted. "No one ever tried before, that I know of, since this was meant as a way to escape detection, not for any carnal act—it's how I got out of the Palace in the _first_ place, for example. Since the body is becoming the other gender, it's possible all those functions would also take effect, but no one could maintain the transformation long enough to find out."

"Is that really true?" Seto asked, gaze shrewd. "If you're with child when you change back, where will the child go if it already exists? You said those things which happen during the transformation are real, and if your fork—" He motioned at the bird on his goblet rim. "—gets eaten, the fork won't become a fork again."

Pausing, the Prince considered the words, then said, "It's possible. I've never heard if it was tested it to see if a male becoming a female would allow him to become with child, or the reverse to see if a woman becoming a man would allow her to make a woman become with child. Even if our body changes, our mind doesn't, so most won't choose their own gender to do such a thing with. I really can't tell you what could or would happen, and our limit to maintain the transformation is about three candle marks, no longer. Under the conditions where we use it, we'd never have time to find out."

A long, long silence followed as the young King stared down at the fork-bird, then asked suddenly, "Is that your trump card?"

The Prince snorted. "No. If you think _that's_ a problem, imagine what the trump card would be like, since it would have to be _even more_ extravagant than transformation."

"...I'm not even going to try to guess if your people take things like that as 'normal' kinds of things..." Seto replied dryly.

"...Atem...please don't look like that again..." Mokuba suddenly said plaintively.

At that, the older Prince raised a brow and asked, "So it's okay if I make myself look different from that?"

"No!" the boy gasped in horror. "Just don't transform at all!"

With a grin, he replied, "Don't worry—I agreed to behave, so I don't have any reason to look like anything except myself. I was only giving a demonstration."

"...Does that mean you could choose to look like yourself with a woman's chest, waist, and hips?" the young King asked curiously. "Or look like me or Mokuba in our entirely male forms?"

"That about sums it up," Atem agreed. "See, it's dangerous to not have my obedience in terms of 'behaving properly', right?"

"Now I understand how much the term of just you 'behaving properly' would have hindered you," Seto sighed. "If I'd known this back then, I may just have accepted it as you gave it..."

"I agreed to modify the terms rather than tell you about this, so that was partly my fault, too," Atem answered wryly.

"Take your fork back before I decide to kill it and feed it to the dogs," the pale teen replied with a sour face—and to his surprise, the words made Atem laugh, then comply.

The rest of the day progressed the way the darker teen was familiar with, other than the new addition of Seto joining the sword practice after lunch, and while he was nervous still, he went to Seto's room before the other teen even got back. He hesitated at the door between their rooms for a minute, then his eyes fell on the jewelry box and he remembered the necklace. With a little sigh, he wondered if Seto would ever give it to him, or if it was meant for someone else after all. Since he had no answer, and had used a lot of his energy to show the brothers 'transformation', he went to the older teen's bed and climbed into it—and promptly fell asleep.

A&S

When he woke, it was morning and an arm was wrapped around his waist as he lay with his back to someone's chest. He knew it was Seto without having to look, and this time, he felt better about it, but still nervous and somewhat uncomfortable. Or rather, the sensation wasn't so much of discomfort for being held in such a way, it was due to his as yet uncertain circumstances. Despite their conversation the day before, Atem still didn't really know what the King felt for him, and all he'd been able to assess from the answer he'd gotten was that it wasn't just a game for the sake of a game.

"You were decidedly daring last night," Seto commented in amusement, revealing the fact that he was also awake.

"No, I was just really tired and didn't want to be woken by having to move into this room. I performed two transformations yesterday and did my weapons practice, so I _needed_ to sleep," the Prince replied dryly. "You're surprisingly good at swordplay, even when I'm in peak condition, so the match wore me out."

"I prefer your company as you are now," the young King suddenly said, pushing himself into a sitting position. "Unless your life is in imminent danger or I order you to, don't transform your own body—ever."

Blinking in surprise as he stared up at Seto from where he lay, he said, "I wasn't planning on it, other than if I needed to for an inter-related spell casting. Can you allow that, or do I have to tell my teacher he can't teach me skills inter-related with personal transformation?"

"There's such a thing?" the pale teen frowned.

"A skill I don't know yet, a casting called 'mirage', uses both together, just as an example," the smaller teen replied.

"Isn't that an illusion-based skill? That's what mirages are, isn't it?"

"Natural ones. When we cast 'mirage', we influence ourselves and the surrounding environment—basically, we use illusion magic to make things look a certain way so the enemy or ally takes a certain route, and the route we lead them down has been literally, physically transformed to suit our needs. It could be something as simple as stepping into an alleyway and making a wall appear there, one which looks like its surroundings, but which is solid if you touch it. Illusions can't be 'solid', so we have to use another skill to fill the gap," Atem explained.

"...You mean transformation can also transform pure energy?" Seto asked with a cross-eyed expression.

"Apparently, since I've seen my father and uncle do it, but I haven't learned it yet."

"Fine, you can use it when you're in your lessons as well. In the meantime, you should get up and go back to your room."

Atem did, and found things shift back to normal that day, and the next, and the next, so long as he spent the night in the King's room. It was fine as it was, and he was starting to get used to the contact and position after two weeks—only for Seto to change it again.

A&S

That night, when the Prince joined the pale teen in his room, Seto fairly dragged him onto the bed on his back, then rolled over to lay along his body, on top of him. It didn't go any further than that, and by morning, they had returned to their normal positions, but the next night was the same, and the next. Even though he hadn't intended on doing so, he had actually gotten used to having the other teen laying on him like that.

Finally, after a week like that, they bathed together, and Atem had been expecting to have the King laying on him again, but instead, the taller teen moved over to a package on his desk which had arrived there between breakfast and lunch that day. From it, he took a fair-sized bottle (more like a jar) and brought it back over to Atem, who sat on the bed, asking, "This is the oil which keeps your skin soft, isn't it?"

Taking it curiously, the Prince opened it and sniffed the contents, then took a bit on his finger and rubbed it in his hands. It had a rich, warm smell, something like coconut and pomegranate, and it took work to rub it into the skin, but a slick sheen remained on the surface. Silently, he took some and took one of Seto's hands, rubbing it into said hand, then taking the other and doing the same. He focussed on the roughest parts, like the callouses, completely unaware of what he was doing to the King's lower regions by fairly stroking his hands with oil.

"See, it's already working on your skin, even in such condition, but no more will absorb in, so there's no point in using more in any one spot," Atem said at last, releasing the second hand and looking up at Seto. "It looks like you found the right kind for this, too."

The King blinked at him a few times like he was dazed, then took the jar back and said, "You've been a month without it, so undress and I'll rub it into your skin."

For a moment, the Prince stared at him, trying to figure out why the other teen wanted to do what would usually be a servant's work, then sighed and slipped his nightclothes off. After all, he was already used to Seto seeing his bare body, so it wasn't like he had any nervousness in that way anymore, and he doubted the taller teen would hurt him, even if he made really strange requests. Once he was nude, he put his back to the other teen, indicating he should start there, so the King did—and the somewhat rough hands running over his back and sides with the oil made him shiver a bit as he felt himself being massaged, too.

It was surprisingly relaxing, and when Seto said quietly, "Turn around," he didn't think to question it, just did so. The hands began running over his face, neck, shoulders, chest, and belly in that odd, soothing, massaging way, and he was so relaxed, he didn't even realize his nipples were being played with, nor did he realize he was arching into the hands doing the task. He didn't even notice when lips closed over one of them to suck and lick it, and didn't realize he'd lifted his hands to grasp the King's head to hold it to his chest. It didn't take long before the lips moved over to the other nipple, leaving behind a hard, dark bud.

"On your knees," the pale teen told him quietly after pulling back from the other nipple, and Atem pushed himself up to his knees. The hands worked down his arms, then moved down to his ass, even sliding the oil between the cheeks and gently poking at his opening before moving forward—

And he moaned and looked down in surprise as he realized Seto was rolling his balls between his hands, spreading the oil, something the Prince had never even come _remotely_ close to experiencing before. When the young King was done with that, thankfully not taking too long on it, he began to work the oil through the fluffy, red and black pubic hair around the base of Atem's length, which was growing hard. He felt embarrassed at the realization, but the pale teen didn't seem bothered by the bronze erection in his face.

Soon after, Seto looked up and said, "Lay down, and keep your legs spread so I can look at you."

It was all too clear where the oily massage was going, but for once, the Prince didn't want to stop it, so he—laid down on his back with his knees spread wide as he stretched out. He was deliberately displaying himself, and a glance at an amused Seto showed him the older teen knew it, too. Even if he'd wanted to stop the current situation, once he did that, it was impossible to back out, since he'd just shown how much he wanted it, too, even if it hadn't been his initial intent.

Seto's hands continued down his thighs, to the outside of his legs, one at a time, then came back up the inside to the knee after working on the feet. Both hands then worked on kneading the insides of his thighs while he panted and moaned from the attention working its way up to the place he most wanted to feel the hands on. Finally, they got there and grasped his already sensitive, excited length, stroking it in a way which made him wish he was the one entering his partner—but he knew already he was going to be the one entered.

And he, oddly enough, felt no desire to stop the activity.


	6. Chapter 6 - Party Arrival

Party Arrival

When Atem woke, it was to hear Seto growl, "What are _you_ staring at?" It was clear he was angry, and his arm was tense and tighter than normal around his waist.

"But, Your Majesty, His Highness is...was..." a very shocked, embarrassed servant began, making the Prince open his eyes slowly. Two women stood nearby, staring at the two of them with almost horrified expressions, trying to figure out what they should think of their King and the foreign Prince in the same bed together.

"Not a word of this to anyone else, not even the other servants," the King glared.

"We thought...you weren't going to torture the Prince..." the other servant, a younger one who had only started there around the time Atem had arrived, said bravely.

"Does he _look_ 'tortured'?" the pale teen asked, one eye twitching in anger.

"All right, enough..." the Prince said quietly, drawing all eyes to him. He pointed at the jar on the floor and said, "That's an oil my people use after bathing to keep our skin from getting dry and rough, but I've been without it for a month. The King helped me apply it and...things got a little out of hand. Can you at least trust _my_ word I wasn't forced or tortured?"

Seto stared at him in shocked surprise as the two women stared, then the younger one gave a little, wry, half-smile and said, "Your Highness, we already knew you haven't been sleeping in your own room, but we thought that was because you were trying to escape at night. If you say this is all right...We have to accept it. Please be safe, and tell us if you need anything."

"Hey, you're supposed to be loyal to _me_, not the foreign Prince!" the King glared.

"But...His Highness is kinder to us," the younger servant said with a pout, and the older one looked at her in horror.

"Don't _say_ things like that to His Majesty, Shizuka! You'll be punished!" she gasped at the younger girl.

Seto fell onto the bed and pouted into the back of Atem's shoulders as he muttered, "I go out of my way to be nicer than my father and they call a foreigner 'nicer'..."

Chuckling, Atem said, "Stop pouting, Seto. You _are_ pretty rough around the edges and remarkably _bad_ at expressing yourself, so what are the servants _supposed_ to think?" He then looked at the women, who gaped at him for talking to the King that way, and said, "I'd like to ask the same as the King—that you keep this quiet. Please."

"Okay," the two agreed slowly, then headed for his room.

"...You really have a lot of gall to talk to me like that," Seto muttered in amusement, his arm around Atem loosening.

"After bedding me, you think you have a right to complain?" the Prince replied, just as amused. "Can I go now, before anyone _else_ comes?"

The King lifted his arm and Atem sat up—only to wince and hold his hand to his lower back. "...That's going to make things difficult..." he sighed quietly—only to feel Seto's hands massaging the pained area. As he did, Atem reached over and put the cap on the jar of oil, then sat still until the pain went away. When it did, he rose carefully and said, "That's better, thanks. I think I can manage, but I'm probably going to skip my lesson and practice today."

"If needed, I'll make your excuses, then," the King agreed as he rose and grabbed the Prince's nightclothes off the floor so he could help the smaller teen dress. As Atem headed for his own room slowly, the taller teen grabbed his own clothes and dressed.

Once the Prince was in his own room with the door closed, the younger servant from before, Shizuka, pounced on him, undressing him and taking a cloth with some warm water to him as she asked eagerly, "So, was he good?"

"Good?" Atem asked blankly.

"In bed! In bed! Was His Majesty good in bed, Your Highness?" she asked eagerly, making both the Prince and the older servant flush.

"I don't think that's actually your business..." the foreign teen replied oddly, so red even the tips of his ears showed the color.

"Aww..." Shizuka pouted, quickly finishing her task of wiping down his body. She then helped him dress as the older servant folded down the blankets and shifted the pillows so he could half-sit in the bed.

"Did you want something to read while you rest, Your Highness?" the older woman asked as both helped—or rather, forced—him to settle comfortably.

He was about to answer when a man knocked on the door, then opened it to call, "Prince Atem, your countrymen have arrived. Are you able to meet with them?"

Heart in his throat, the teen asked, "When did they get here?"

"Maybe half a candle mark. They've been settled in one of the small parlors near the Central Hall while rooms are being prepared, and asked after you immediately," the man answered.

Rubbing his head a bit tiredly, Atem rose and went to the door, forcing himself not to walk too fast, even as he said, "I'll meet with them. The sooner, the better."

"This way, then," the man agreed, turning to lead the way to the room.

When the man opened the door, all of the occupants looked up—and one was beside him immediately, holding her hand near him as she used her power to 'scan' his body. With a motion, Atem indicated the man who had led him there should leave and close the door—a motion he'd learned from Seto—and as soon as it closed, he placed his hand flat against the woman's, blocking off her power. He knew, if she kept scanning him, she'd find out about last night, and anything which could have turned out peacefully would dissolve in war.

"What are you doing, Prince Atem?" Isis asked him sharply, the gold bands in her black hair clinking together lightly as she gave her head a bit of a shake and glared at him. Her white robe was typical of a Priest, and she had herb pouches tied at her waist.

"Stopping you from using up unneeded power," Atem replied dryly. "The new young King doesn't approve of torture, so I haven't been harmed, other than in the initial fight when I was captured." His eyes then scanned the others in the room and his expression became wryly amused as he saw who was there. "How did I know he was going to send this particular group?" he asked wryly.

He'd been right to say Isis, his uncle, Akhenaten, and Shada; the leaders of the group ended there, and the others who came along were also ones he'd suspected would be doing so. There were the guards Jonou and Honra, the Priestess Anzu, a close servant of Isis', the entertainer-spy Malik, one of the Pharaoh's servants called the Medjai and Isis' brother, Merik, the Captain of the Temple Guards, Rishid, and the spy-thief, Bhakura.* Most of them looked too spindly to be powerful. Rishid, on the other hand, seemed like a muscle-bound idiot, and the two guards looked like spindly muscle-bound idiots. They were all exceptionally powerful, however, both as Mages or Priests and as warriors, and ones like Merik, Malik, and Bhakura could single-handedly destroy whole armies.

"We came to free you, Nephew," Akhenaten said simply, rising and moving over to grasp Atem's shoulder. "And you should let the Priestess heal you, as you are indeed in pain at the moment—you may be good at shielding yourself from me, but not so good you can keep me out entirely. What manner of torture were you subjected to?"

The others gasped in horror as Atem held his hands up in a surrender motion and said, "It wasn't torture, it's just got a somewhat unpleasant aftermath. Uncle, we can actually make a trade agreement with them which would be to both our kingdoms' benefit if we write up proper trade agreements. I've already started making arrangements to that end, and so far, the King has been convincing his ministers to go with it, since most of our northern borderland is actually useless to them. On the other hand, they can make use of the parts we can't, and some of our useless and excess products can go to them. _Including_ those two particular items we trade with the east for, even though they have little to no use to us."

A long silence followed, then Shada said, "It may be prudent to at least look at the current agreement and see if the Prince is correct, but if he happens to share his father's shrewd trade nature, we may well want to cooperate for the time being. Your Highness, exactly _whose_ bed were you in last night?"

Atem flushed red as everyone turned to stare at Shada for a moment, then at the Prince, and Anzu asked, "What does that mean? Like when you and the young Prince would sleep together because he had a nightmare?"

Isis sighed and said, "Your Highness, sit down and let me ease your pain. It cannot be comfortable standing up after such an..._activity_."

Still very red, Atem complied, letting Isis place her hand on his lower back to heal him, her gaze a bit surprised and puzzled. As everyone sat again, the Prince asked, "Priest Shada, how did you know what I meant?"

"Surely you know others have experimented with such things before," the Priest pointed out in a dry tone. "While I have nothing against you having done it, assuming it was indeed by your own will, I'm sure I can safely say we all would have preferred you chose one of your own countrymen for the experience."

"I never had enough of an interest in 'my own countrymen' to think of such a thing, Priest Shada," Atem sighed.

"Priestess, is there any indication of harm?" Akhenaten asked the woman as she lifted her hand.

Looking up, she gave her head a shake and said, "It was merely the unavoidable stretching of a body unfamiliar with doing so. It seems the Prince's partner went out of his way to prevent harm and, most likely, pain other than that. How are you feeling now, Your Highness?"

"Much better. Thank you, Priestess Isis," the Prince said, nodding at her with a faint smile.

"Will you tell us who your partner was?" Akhenaten asked of his nephew.

"No. Not yet, anyway," Atem shrugged. "You may find out at whatever point you meet him, but...I wouldn't count on that, and I would honestly prefer to keep that to myself. My partner is no one else's business if he hasn't caused harm."

A silence fell, then Merik said, "I have a question, then." When the others looked at him, he asked, "How is it you were able to come to us so quickly as a prisoner, let alone coming without an escort? I thought we'd have to wait until they let us into the dungeons or a tower room before we'd be able to see you, Your Highness."

"Such would have normally been the case," Rishid agreed.

"That would be because the King has been leading people to believe I'm here to represent my people in a trade agreement, all so his nobles who like to torture people can't lay a hand on me," he explained, making the others stare. "Most of those nobles served his father, who _did_ like to torture people, even his own son and heir, let alone any foreigners. The new King has forbidden them to torture people, but not all of them will obey when he's not watching them, so the result of my status as a political prisoner is that I spend a good deal of time with the King and his younger brother. I've met others, and because of the duel I had with the King when I first arrived, other than the King trying to keep me out of his nobles' hands, I've otherwise been treated like any other ambassador here to make trade agreements. I've even helped secure and enforce our agreements with other surrounding nations, and the other ambassadors do indeed treat me like another of their number."

Silence fell as the others sat to think about what he'd said, but before they could discuss any more, the door burst open—and a panting Mokuba stood there. He then stopped to stare around the room before his eyes lit on Atem—and he said, "Some of the nobles are on the war path, because they think _they_ should have met your people before _you_ did, Atem!"

"Then don't stand in the door!" Atem gasped as he rose—and all at once, Rishid and Merik were in the doorway, blocking swords as they pushed Mokuba into the room, and into the Prince's arms.

A moment later, Rishid and Merik were forced back into the room, so sprang back and braced themselves, even as Jonou and Honra joined them, followed shortly by Malik as Bhakura vanished. A good dozen or so men in soldiers' uniforms and hooded cloaks stepped into the room, clearly thinking they had the advantage against all of five fighters—only to turn and stare in surprise as two men fell to the ground suddenly, followed by two more a moment later. One of the men at the back of the group caught Bhakura and made him fight properly, so the rest attacked the Egyptian fighters in front. A few minutes later, all the attackers lay dead on the floor, even as people came to the door to see what had happened—and stopped to stare in horror.

Finally, a voice outside cut the air like a whip as it ordered harshly, "Get out of my way!" People turned to look in surprise, then withdrew, and soon, Seto arrived in the doorway—only to stop and stare at the bodies, then up at the others in the room, who included Mokuba. "What happened here?" he asked, lips pressed together in a thin line, eyes on Atem in an accusatory way.

"It's not Atem's fault!" Mokuba burst out, standing up and facing his brother head-on. "Those guys, if those Egyptian soldiers hadn't acted so fast, they would have killed _me_, even _before_ getting to the new Egyptian ambassadors the Crown Prince was waiting for, so you can't blame him! They saved _my_ life, too, Big Brother."

Seto blinked as he gazed at his brother, then looked up at the others in the room, even as Atem rose and the other Egyptians looked between the boy, the pale teenager, and their own Prince in confusion. His eyes then went to Atem as he asked, "I thought you weren't feeling well and planned on resting today, Prince Atem?"

"Yes, but my people arrived earlier, so I wanted to meet them, King Seto," the darker teen replied in mild amusement, even as all of his people's jaws dropped in sudden understanding and shock. "But what kind of nobles do you have here if they would even try to kill their own younger Prince?"

Looking up at the others again, the taller teen sighed and said, "Apparently some worse than even _I_ thought. It looks like I'm going to have to purge my court again, this time for High Treason against the royal family. How have your people been treated outside this incident?"

"Well enough. They're waiting for rooms to be prepared for them, but I have no idea if that was interrupted earlier or not," the Prince replied.

Nodding, Seto said, "I'll verify what arrangements have been made and make certain the preparations are going smoothly. In the meantime, I'll leave Prince Mokuba in your care, and I'll join you here for the noon meal—once the meal is over, you'll all be able to go to your rooms and rest." With that, he turned and left, shouting into the hall, "Clean up the bodies and get the floor washed! Make that your priority!"

And, it clearly became a priority as soon as Seto gave the order, because the blood had barely begun to dry when the bodies were taken away and servants were washing the blood off the floor. It only took half a candle mark, even as a couple more worked on washing small blood spots off walls, the door, and a couple of furniture items which had been close enough to get splattered. The people in the Nihon Palace were so obviously used to cleaning up blood and bodies the Egyptians began to feel sorry for them, but they were also efficient, so had finished and gone in less than a full candle mark. Only Mokuba and the Egyptians remained.

"Your people are really, really strong. No wonder my brother wanted you to spar with the Captain and the Major—and why they _like_ sparring with you. They actually have to _work_ at it to win!" Mokuba burst out eagerly, facing Atem with a grin. Then he immediately asked with a puzzled frown, "You were feeling sick? Since when?"

Atem snorted as the other Egyptians looked taken aback, then the older Prince replied, "The Priestess Isis, who also happens to be our Chief Healer, healed me, so I feel fine now. Don't worry about it, Mokuba."

"So now the new King makes it impossible for us to hold private discussions with our own Prince?" Akhenaten asked with a sour face—then blinked in surprise when the younger boy faced him with a shrewd gaze.

"What's 'private' about Atem being a political prisoner? That's just for the benefit of the foreign nobles—also so they can't take advantage of Egypt's weakened state—and to keep the nobles from trying to kidnap and torture your Prince. Anyway, you should be _thanking_ Atem and my brother for actually making your nation stronger, even though your Prince technically can't leave now that he's here," the young Prince said. "Oh, but wait, you were thinking I wouldn't already know, and had been left here so you couldn't discuss all the things you needed to, because Atem already told you he's been made to look like he's here for a legitimate trade agreement?"

At that, the others' eyes widened in surprise, Atem held a hand to his head like it hurt, and Mokuba just smirked. "...Children speak in such a way?" Akhenaten asked.

"Just children like Mokuba and Yuugi—and yes, Yuugi talks like that at times, too. In Mokuba's case, though, he's lived in the middle of a nest of deceit since he was born, so he can _always_ see minor things others wouldn't notice," Atem said wryly. "But he's actually here because King Seto trusts us to protect him from some nobles who are, apparently, quite willing to kill him at the moment. Basically, he trusts foreigners with his brother more than he trusts his own people."

"How about if we just go home and take Prince Mokuba with us, so we can demand our Crown Prince back in exchange for _this_ Prince?" Jonou offered with a smirk.

The boy's eyes went to him as he said, "Those guys attacked me because killing me was supposed to be a warning to my brother. If you took me away from here—and away from their reach—he'd be _thanking_ you, and would never make the trade, since it would put me back in danger if he did."

A long silence followed, then Anzu asked quietly, "So...just _how_ freely are we allowed to talk?"

Mokuba dropped into one of the seats towards the outer wall—and near where Jonou and Honra had positioned themselves—and said, "Start by getting Atem to tell you the terms of his duel with my brother, because frankly, even _I_ think those terms are dangerous after what happened a little over three weeks ago."

Atem held a hand to his suddenly aching head as all eyes went to him and his uncle asked in a warning tone, "Nephew, why are you clearly hiding things from us?"

Since he had no choice, the Prince moved over and sat where he had before and waited while the others returned to their previous seats. When they were all sitting, he explained, "I was already injured badly enough to need a week's worth of recovery, but not so badly I couldn't fight if I needed or wanted to. The King asked me for a duel to verify I had killed about half his soldiers who died in the attack, but if it was just a duel for the sake of one, I couldn't be bothered. So, we made terms, that if I won, I'd be released immediately, and if he won, I'd 'behave properly'."

At those words, the others looked amused, but their expressions became serious again as he went on, "But the King modified that to 'obey him' as well, and I further modified that to say 'as long as I didn't have to take or cause harm of any sort to anyone'. I've been living under that set of terms since then, but for the most part, he's been treating me very well—the first thing I got was care for my injuries, and I'm continuing my Mage lessons, as well as—like Mokuba mentioned—having a few sparring partners."

"And what happened three weeks ago, Your Highness?" Shada asked quietly.

The teen made a sour face and said, "It wasn't really as bad as Mokuba made it sound, but it resulted in King Seto throwing a temper tantrum and completely avoiding me for a day and a half—he had asked me to do something I wasn't comfortable with, not without knowing why he wanted me to do it. So, first I had to confront him with the fact that it _was_ 'causing harm', hence the tantrum, then I had to get him to explain his reason and stop being so absolute in his reactions to my actions. Since then, things have gone back to normal."

"And he still roped you into going along with him," Mokuba snorted.

A silence fell, then Rishid asked, "If you're being given so much freedom, is it possible the King would move your room to the same area as ours?"

"No," Mokuba snorted again before Atem could say anything. "Not only is that dangerous for Atem, but he likes having Atem in the adjoining room too much. Makes me wonder just how much time they spend together."

All eyes went to the older Prince as Atem turned flame red and said, "Mokuba, you're not helping..."

The silence which fell after those words was positively oppressive, and extended for a very long time, until Shada said, "After hearing that, continuing trade negotiations may not be possible."

Looking up with a steady gaze now that his blush had faded, Atem said, "As the Crown Prince, I don't want to turn this into a war when it's _not needed_. A lot of what's going on is my own personal business, nothing more. That's _my_ view, anyway."

A&S

A/N:

* Some of the names are obviously edited, so they sound/look a little more in line with the trend for 'Egyptian' names...Jonou = Jonouchi/Joey, Honra = Honda/Tristan, Bhakura = Bakura. All the light/dark pairs in the canon story are separate people in this one, hence the reason both 'Ryou' and 'Bakura', 'Merik' and 'Malik', and 'Yuugi' and 'Atem' exist (though I couldn't think of any way to modify Yuugi's name to be more 'Egyptian').


	7. Chapter 7 - Testing

A/N: This one's a little longer than my average because it's two edited chapters combined into one. Again, let me know if you're interested in the originals.

*There's a reference to a marble at one point...unless you're wanting the originals of these two chapters, don't ask what it was used for.

Also, since the term comes up fairly regularly and people may not know what it is: candlemark = an hour. Back before there were clocks to tell time, almost all candles were marked with hour marks based on how quickly they burned.

Testing

After Atem's words, a tense silence fell until the noon meal was brought in. Not long after, Seto joined them, stopping to stare at the many hostile gazes in the room, then looking at Mokuba's satisfied smirk and noting how Atem wouldn't look at anyone—and no one had moved to the table yet.

"You may as well just _tell_ me what Mokuba brought up to upset you so much," the paler teen said simply.

"Why is our Crown Prince staying in the room reserved for a ruler's wife?" Akhenaten asked sharply.

Seto snorted. "_You_ don't know my nobles the way _I_ do. If Prince Atem is in that room, they _know_ they can't risk laying a hand on him—I'll know it as soon as they _try_. Are you going to fault me for being his shield? And I'm sure you know they fairly hate him for killing about a dozen of some of the best soldiers in this land. Besides, I have no wife and no intention of marrying anytime soon, so it isn't as though someone else needs it."

"Isn't it more that he's there so he's close at hand to satisfy your desires?" the older man asked in a cold tone. His one good eye was intense as the other tried to read the King's mind—only to blink in momentary surprise as he found he could read very little.

The young King asked, "So is it me or Prince Atem you're accusing and punishing? By his expression right now, you're laying whatever crime and punishment you've decided is deserved on _him_. Just to inform you of this fact, I haven't done anything to hurt him, and I don't intend on doing so. I'm just very bad at expressing myself, or so he says, which caused us both a good deal more pain than expected. Now, exactly what is it you intend on accusing me of?"

"Forcing him to share your bed," Akhenaten replied, making Mokuba's eyes widen slightly—he was still young, so his mind hadn't reached that conclusion yet.

Crossing his arms as he smirked, Seto asked, "If such a thing had happened, wouldn't that have been the _first_ thing your Prince told you when he stepped safely into your hands this morning? After seeing him turn his fork into a bird and himself into a woman, I'm quite certain the lot of you would be able to walk out of here with him in the event that he'd told you he'd been so harmed. He is also well aware of the fact, so would have no reason to hide such a torture or trauma from his own people."

Silence fell, then Isis sighed and said, "Your Highness, you may want to properly introduce us. We'll have to discuss this issue with the Pharaoh before deciding what course to take, so it would be best if we behaved peacefully for the time being."

The words made Seto snort, then say, "Since I'm sure you all know I'm King Seto by now, Prince Atem can just give me your names and titles so I know where to place you for the evening meal in the Great Hall."

Looking up with a slightly relieved expression, Atem said, "Then I have to begin with my uncle, Grand Vizier Akhenaten, my father's twin brother. The Chief Healer and Priestess of Isis, whose name is also Isis, has come here with her most skilled healer's apprentice, Anzu. Priest Shada of the Priests of Anubis often mentors a boy who has thieving tendencies, but makes a remarkably skilled and powerful spy, Bhakura, so his young apprentice came with him. Priestess Isis' younger brother, Marik, found his way into the position of one of the twelve Medjai, the Pharaoh's personal guards. One of their clansmen, Rishid, is the Captain of the Temple Guards, and while Malik is usually considered an entertainer, he acts as both a spy and Temple Guard with Captain Rishid. The last two of the number are Palace Guards called Jonou and Honra, who often guard officials outside the Palace walls." As he spoke, the named person either inclined their head or bowed, depending on their rank.

Seto gave an impressed whistle and said, "For as much as you were right about who would come, Prince Atem, it still surprises me so many high-ranking nobles would come here to find you."

"Most of them are commoners who were promoted to noble status when they proved their skills and knowledge in their chosen field," Atem replied dryly, making the King look at him in surprise. "Really, my uncle, Priestess Isis, and Medjai Merik are the only titled nobles here," the Prince answered in pure amusement.

A pause followed, then Seto said in wry amusement, "The secret to your power comes clear. Your people aren't chosen for their roles by blood, but by _ability_, so the best are always actively present in your courts to keep things in hand. And it's easy to remove bad blood that way, too, since all it would take is to sponsor someone with the skill to further their education so they can overtake the one needing to be removed. If I had a way of educating my people, I'd gladly do the same."

"Then use your personal funds to set up schools for your commoners, where all children can learn to read, write, and do basic arithmetic, and sponsor ones who show they're especially good at it so they can further their education at your University," Atem said dryly. "That's what _we_ do. Plenty of nobles fund schools kids can go to for free to learn skills like that, and the noble gains status by bringing a skilled new addition to court for the Pharaoh. Even my father funds several schools and sponsors children in their skills—Priest Shada was one of those the Pharaoh personally sponsored, and who, in turn, sponsored Bhakura. It works remarkably well."

Nodding, the King said, "I'll see what I can slip past my court, then." He paused for a moment, then motioned at the table and said, "Shall we eat, then? It won't do for this food to go to waste."

They sat down to eat, with Akhenaten and Atem to either side of Seto, and Mokuba beside Atem, then the rest around the circle. Conversation flowed more easily by then, so they told a variety of stories about their homelands and childhoods. It didn't take long for Seto to start directing the table, without the foreigners—other than Atem—even noticing he'd done it. However, there was still an underlying sense of dislike and uncertainty below the general good cheer of the meal, so nothing went further than a bit of 'direction'.

At the end of the meal, as the dishes were being taken away, a scribe came in with stacks of paper, so Seto rose and said, "I know you want to rest for the day, so rather than calling a trade discussion meeting, I just had my scribes prepare documents concerning the preliminary trade agreements I've made with Prince Atem. My court has agreed to much of the listed terms, and you'll have until at least tomorrow afternoon to go through them. Feel free to relax or explore as you wish—my brother and Prince Atem can show you around this afternoon or tomorrow morning, as you like. I, on the other hand, have work to do, so I must take my leave for the time being. Servants will guide you to the Great Hall for the meal so you can be introduced, but the only one who needs to give a reply is the Grand Vizier. I look forward to hearing what you say in reply, Vizier Akhenaten, if you're anything like your nephew." He then motioned the scribe to hand out the papers, gave a regal nod, and walked out.

"He doesn't stay anywhere for long, does he?" Anzu asked with a sigh as the scribe handed out the trade agreement papers. "Though, I'm a little glad he's gone..."

Mokuba snorted and said, "Yeah, my brother has that effect on almost everyone. I think Atem and I are the only ones immune to him. Anyway, I don't know about _your_ land, but if he waits half a candle mark too long, his court might ransack the Palace and burn it down before anyone knows it happened—our father taught them to be brutal barbarians."

Akhenaten looked at his nephew as the scribe left and asked, "Why can't I read him? Are you shielding him, Nephew?"

"No, Uncle," the Prince sighed. "I can't read him, either. Whatever those shields are that he put up, they're powerful. Because my power is based on reading the emotion of the soul, not reading tangible thoughts, I _should_ be able to read him, even with shields, but I can't. Even _Mokuba_ is almost impossible to read, though that's not so much because he's 'shielded', it's more because his essence is 'slippery'. I can still read more from him than from King Seto."

Suddenly, Priest Shada spoke up in surprise, making the others look at him to see Bhakura pointing at something over his shoulder on the papers he'd been given, "Prince Atem, have you really been able to secure a trade deal like this, even as a political prisoner?"

"Pretty much, but a lot of that is because the King wants to keep us strong enough to guard from the barbarians in the south," Atem agreed. "It isn't finalized and still needs fine-tuning on both sides, but it's a good start, and even the northern borderland division helps us as much as it does them. That's what most of his reasoning to his court is, in fact."

"In what way? Shouldn't they want the resources to make the goods themselves?" Shada asked, tipping his head to the side, even as the others actively began reading the trade agreement.

"Except that our people _don't_ know how to _get_ at those resources, so my brother said, instead of taking land to try to make things we don't know how to, why don't we just let Egypt keep producing it and take their excess cheaply?" Mokuba told them. "It made sense to bandits to get others to do the work and just take the end result, so the only borderland which even has use to us is the soil our farmers know how to grow coastal crops in—all the lands you don't use, anyway. And to his court, it _does_ look like they're benefiting more than you are, because they don't know how much some of the things we're going to trade to you actually cost in Egypt—a couple of those are really expensive for you, and we're getting two, or even three, products in exchange."

"...Very well, we'll go through these this afternoon and evening," Akhenaten agreed. "In the meantime, other than this, I would much prefer to spend the rest of the day resting. There will be time later for exploration."

"Okay, I'll call the servants," Mokuba agreed, rising. He then asked, "What are _you_ going to do, Atem?"

"I'm resting, too, I'm afraid," the teen replied wryly, so the boy nodded. Soon after, everyone had gone to their rooms to rest until the evening meal.

As far as the meal went, it was surprisingly calm, other than the introduction of the 'Egyptian trading party', only four of whom actively joined the main table, even as the other six began making friends with servants and guards in the area and joining them for their meals. Anzu made friends with young healers and joined them for meals, placing her in just the right position to get to know the students at the Palace University as well as the Healers and Mages. In his introduction, Seto deliberately left off Isis' position as the Chief Healer of Egypt, and no one chose to correct him or add the detail, and Akhenaten's reply, while cordial, caused a chuckle, since he was behaving like a cynical old man.

Atem then quickly retreated to his own room again to sleep—and woke to feel a hand on his shoulder. Looking up sleepily, he saw Seto and asked, "Is it time?"

The other teen raised a brow and asked, "Did you tell them I slept with you?"

"No. Isis' healing told her what had gone on, and Shada knew I'd had another man in my bed—apparently, he's done so before, as well. Then Mokuba announcing the actual position of my room caused them to jump to this conclusion. I think you managed to convince them you aren't the one who bedded me, though, or at least made them doubt whether they had it right," Atem told him dryly. "Uncle can read minds, but he can't read yours, only little bits and pieces, so he can't just say you're the one in my bed—or me in yours—without seeing or reading it, which he didn't during the whole meal."

"...He can read minds? Couldn't he read yours?" the King asked, seeming a little perturbed.

Shaking his head, the Prince said, "Like you, I'm shielded to a degree where there's only little bits and pieces he can read, nothing concrete enough to count as evidence."

After a long silence, Seto asked quietly, "Do you plan on stopping this now that your countrymen are here?"

"Your Majesty, don't you think we've effectively crossed the point of no return, especially after the way I was behaving last night?" the darker teen asked a little tiredly.

Considering that for a moment made the King smirk, "You're right, you were acting like quite a whore, weren't you?" When Atem flushed red, Seto reached down to pick him up in both arms, then carried him to his own room, where he laid him on the bed. "So, do you have any other tips or lessons you want to share tonight, _Your Highness_?"

"There's something I want to try, but I don't know how it'll work, so bear with me—you shouldn't dislike it, anyway," the darker teen said, so Seto raised a brow, but gave a nod of approval.

A&S

In the morning, Atem woke feeling entirely dazed. The night had been _pleasurably kinky_, for lack of a better word, and there was an after-effect he was a little worried about, prompting him to ask Seto about it when the taller teen woke. In response to his question, the King handed him a marble, which the younger took to examine for a moment.

As the King took the marble back and rose, before either of them realized it had happened, Atem reached out to catch the older teen's sleeve. They both stared at his hand for a moment before their eyes lifted to each other—and Seto suddenly leaned down to kiss the smaller teen on the lips, gently and passionately. As they kissed, the Prince's hand slipped from the cloth, releasing the taller teen. When Seto finished, he drew back and it was as though he made a sudden decision about something. He went to the drawer where the jewelry box was, took something from it, and returned to Atem's side.

Opening his hand so the Prince could see the item, he smiled as the younger teen's eyes went huge—while Seto didn't know Atem had seen the choker already, it still surprised the darker teen to be given it. "...That's..." he murmured.

"You can relate it to Am—to Ra if you like, but the wings are also my family's mark, so...I want to mark you as mine," Seto answered the unspoken question. "In a way, I suppose it could be a type of marriage...but, well, this is also a promise that I'll keep you safe from my court." He stopped talking and lifted the necklace to secure it around the smaller teen's neck where everyone would be able to see it—and Atem let him, closing his eyes as it was secured in place.

Reaching up to finger it gently, feeling a good deal more complete than he had, the smaller teen said, "You know, I'm going to have a hard time explaining this to my uncle, let alone the others..."

"Do you not want it?" the paler teen asked, sounding hurt.

Opening his eyes to smile wryly at the now-slightly-pouting King, Atem replied, "I wouldn't have let you put it on me if I didn't want it."

"Good," the older nodded with a little smile, then rose and moved over to grab his partner's clothes off the floor. Those, he gave to the Prince, then said, "Remember, let me know when they come out, and I'll see if I can think of new ways to play once we know the time it takes for them to work their way out."

"All right," the younger teen agreed, pulling his clothes on, then rising slowly to go back to his own room, where he collapsed in his bed, then promptly fell fast asleep, feeling satisfied and more comfortable in the relationship than he had.

A&S

The next time he woke, Mokuba was gazing at him oddly, eyes on his neck—and Atem reached up to touch the choker. When his hand fell away, the boy said, "I think you should tell me—and your own people—what my brother's doing to you. That thing on your neck is just a pretty way of saying you're his slave."

Rolling over to lay down on his back, the Prince asked, "What if I let him put it on me, knowing what it was?"

"...Why would you do that?"

"Because...it's a marriage proposal, not a slave brand. Unless you consider a 'wife' to be a slave?"

"Two men can't get married!" Mokuba burst out, eyes wide and horrified.

Reaching over, Atem put his hand on the boy's head and said, "We can't, not properly, but this isn't a brand to me. It tells me he means to keep me, and everything up to now wasn't just a game he was playing, so I'd much rather have it than not. At your age, you wouldn't understand it, because you're too young to feel these feelings, but...From the first moment we met...I already belonged to him."

The younger Prince stared down at his hands, then asked tentatively, "Isn't a month a bit...short to decide something like that?"

"...Normally, I'd agree, but no one else can touch me like he does and have me feel it...just to _feel_ it," the older teen said quietly. "Just as an example, when I took that female body and put his hand on my breast—I felt it course through me, but he's _not_ the only man who ever touched my female 'self's' breast like that. With them, I felt nothing about it, and it never made me desire their touch. Plenty of people have touched me all over my body to apply the oil we use to keep our skin soft, but none of those touches ever made me want to feel more...When Seto laid his hands on me that night to apply the oil...I had never wanted to be touched or held more, and I _encouraged_ him to take it all the way. What bothered me before was that I had no idea why he was asking me to do those things, because he never shared his feelings with me."

"...Do you love him?"

Mokuba's rather blunt question made Atem blink, then sigh and give a faint smile, "I don't think I'm brave enough to say that yet...But maybe I would if I could be sure he felt the same way."

With a sigh, the boy said, "Since you basically did just say you love him, could you still say it if you knew about his brutal side?"

"His...brutal side?"

With the older Prince's eyes on him in confusion, Mokuba asked, "Would you even _hear_ me if I told you right now?" When Atem glared, the boy said, "He's still our father's son, and he's the one who took the brunt of the suffering—he exchanged himself for my safety. But after awhile, it started changing him. Atem, I mean it, he's just as able to be cruel and brutal as our father, and I really don't want you to be hurt by him, but what you're doing...You're handing yourself over to him to be tortured later, once he has you tied to him so tightly you couldn't fight him."

Blinking once, then twice, the corner of the Prince's mouth turned up in faint amusement. "Mokuba, thank you for giving me another key."

"A...what?" the boy asked in surprise and confusion.

"A key to take down his shields. No matter what my feelings are, if I can get through his shields and find out what his feelings are, how good or evil he is, I'll be able to pull back if I have to."

"So...You never planned on just blindly handing yourself over to him?"

"I still have responsibilities of my own, so I can't," Atem replied dryly.

"...Oh. Then...it's time for lunch, then your people are meeting with him to discuss the trade deal some more," the boy answered.

A&S

Most of the day went well, other than his people trying to find out where he got the choker from, to Seto's—well-hidden—amusement, and for Atem to stubbornly resist telling them. He gave no answer at all, not on any aspect of it, and the trade deal seemed to move forward well, considering that some of the Prince's data had been a little outdated. Thankfully, none of that had been on important parts of the agreement, only on things which the Nihon ministers weren't likely to mind adjusting. Other than the meeting and supper, Atem stayed in his own room and rested, feeling oddly drained by something he couldn't place. The extra nightly exertion he wasn't used to, maybe?

That night, Seto moved him to his room again, only to play much the way he had the night before, and again the night after, and the night after that. The Prince encouraged his partner to play 'creatively' with him—he was in no way a victim, but the instigator of nearly everything the King did to him, and enjoyed it immensely, limited to the bedroom as it was. Outside that, Seto didn't have many toys readily available to use, so became creative with the positions they joined in. Even then, he limited himself to certain ones, like he was waiting for something, and Atem began to wonder what he was doing—or planning. For about a month, such was the case.

For most of the first two weeks, the Prince felt tired, drained, but as time went on, he got to be less tired and began doing all his usual activities again, including spending time with his own people. They had started getting curious about the place after a week or so, and had begun seriously exploring the Palace and grounds, sometimes with Atem and sometimes on their own. The Prince got the distinct impression they were actually _avoiding_ him for some reason, but it wasn't like they walked away when they saw him—they just rarely seemed to be where he'd find them. It was like that for the whole month.

After some intense love-making one night, the darker teen slowly laid down on his side on the bed, resting, but somehow knowing it wasn't over yet. He was proven right not long after.

"...Atem, does it take less of your energy to just make small changes to your body? Is it even possible for you to specify such changes?" Seto asked suddenly, sitting at his side and gently rubbing his exposed arm.

"What do you mean?" the Prince asked tiredly with a yawn.

"...Without changing any other part of your body, could you, say, make your nails into claws or make your ears into a cat's?"

"It would take less energy to do that, and yes, it's possible. What did you have in mind, Seto?"

"...I really want to know if it's possible for your female body to be with child...with _my_ child. At the same time, I don't want you to change your own appearance, so I was curious as to whether or not you could take...or just add...the female parts to your own body. If your breasts are real, then the female opening must also appear, yes? Since your body changes to such an extent, it must gain the lifeblood of a child...And I want to know if it can be done. Obviously, we'd have to test the effect of your body being only male during the day and both at night, but...Will you please help me find out?" the King asked softly.

For several minutes, Atem had to think hard about what was being asked of him, and he had to consider what it would mean for him and both their peoples. Then, there was the child, itself. What did it actually _need_?

Finally, he sighed and said, "You've made me curious, too, but I'd have to ask Isis for the details of how a woman bears a child. Seto...I would be horribly afraid of beginning such a thing, only to destroy it by not knowing what parts of a woman's body a child needs."

Apparently, the King actually stopped to think about that as well, then said, "We know a child eats from its mother's breast and grows inside its mother's body. Could we begin with that, and tomorrow or the day after, you can ask your Chief Healer about it?"

Slowly, Atem nodded, then reached for just enough of his power to do as the paler teen had asked—he made his own, male body grow small but obviously female breasts, then focussed on his lower regions to 'add' the female functions and opening to his otherwise male body. He then rolled onto his back so Seto could look at him.

After a moment, he asked, "Is this what you wanted?"

A hand found its way between his legs, so he spread them, and heard a soft groan as fingers slipped into a path he _knew_ hadn't been there before then. Atem also gasped faintly from the feeling, a sensation which made his body buzz in a way he wasn't familiar with, even as he _felt_ his nipples harden. The hand moved and joined its partner to explore his new body, revealing its form and secrets to _both_ of them before returning to the woman's opening to stroke it.

"You've done a good job," the King whispered as he lay on the smaller teen's body.


	8. Chapter 8 - Details

A/N: So, I was late with this chapter and the next one was ready to go, so there's 2 new chapters up now. Enjoy!

Details

Waking the next morning made Atem feel odd.

In a way, it felt like he shouldn't have woken, and at the same time, he wasn't sure 'who' he was when he woke. Having taken on female body parts and been bedded by a man while in that form had caused him quite a mental and personality crisis he hadn't been expecting, but remembering the pleasure was enough for him to want it again. It was confusing, especially considering what had been done to him, a thought which made him think back on whether everything had indeed come free of his body.

A mental, magical scan of his body confirmed everything had come out, puzzling him, but the Prince was fully 'awake' enough by then to roll over so he was facing Seto as the older teen lay with his arms around him. The King had asked him to bear his child, all because he knew the smaller teen was capable of taking on a female body. Was that out of real caring, or just to have an heir, or even just for simple control? Without his ability to read the pale teen's soul, he didn't know.

Seto stirred and opened his eyes, then smiled in a surprisingly gentle way and asked, "So, how different is it between a man and a woman? I'd heard women enjoy it more, but...I honestly couldn't tell by your reaction."

With a little chuckle, Atem said, "That's not it. Men and women enjoy it _differently_, not 'more' or 'less'."

"Oh? How so?" the King asked, sounding genuinely curious.

"Well...men reach their release faster, usually, and _feel_ the sensation only where they're being touched and a few other, local spots. Women take longer to reach their release, and they feel the sensation with their whole bodies. However, because you always hold back my release so I only ever _get one_ very intense one as a male, I can safely say the pure intensity with a good partner is the same. Basically, the longer a man holds back his own release, the better it feels for him, and if he was trying to properly please his female partner, they would feel the same release when they came together. And one release would be enough for a man under those conditions," the Prince replied blatantly with a smirk.

Blinking, then blinking again, Seto smirked in reply and said, "But if I only ever released once, _you'd_ never get to have so much fun."

The words made Atem flush and bury his face in the older teen's chest. In his case, he sort of knew it was true, but that may not have been the case, because they'd never really tried having the King hold his release back, too.

Looking up again, he asked, "What if I wanted you to try it, even just once? To see how much playing you could do, but to only release once, with me?"

Shifting to prop his elbow on the bed, then to brace his head on his hand, the paler teen apparently considered the words, then said, "I may try it at some point, but right now, as the King and your master, I'd rather play by my own terms."

The words made the younger teen blink and look away, feeling hurt. "So exactly what's your reason for wanting me to bear your child? So no one will know until you choose to reveal the fact?"

A hand caught his chin and forced him to look back at Seto and meet his eyes. The King then said, "I want _you_ to bear my child _because_ it's _you_ and no other. If you had no female form, I'd never have even thought of it, nor would I have looked anywhere else. Since you _can_ potentially bear a child, I want it to be mine."

Slowly, the Prince let out a breath and began relaxing, reaching out to wrap his arms around the taller teen's neck. The hand which had been holding his chin wrapped around his back to hug him in return, and they stayed like that for a few minutes.

Atem then moved to sit up—and groaned as he rubbed his back. "Geez, you were rather intense last night if you've made me ache like that after two weeks of not feeling it...I feel like I've been arched for a month and don't know how to relax anymore!"

The King laughed and sat up to massage his younger partner's back and sides until the worst of the pain went away. Once it had, Seto got up to retrieve their clothing, passing Atem's to him before dressing, himself. He then thought of something and asked, "How are you going to ask your Healer about women's bodies without revealing the true depth of our relationship to her?"

"...I don't know that part, yet," the darker teen sighed, then rose carefully once he was finished dressing.

"...She'll tell your uncle, won't she?"

"...Probably."

"Well...we can't leave it, and the Healers here would have heart attacks if you tried to get them to tell you. Should I...just go with you to talk with her?" Seto asked.

Shaking his head, the Prince said wryly, "If you were there and we started asking questions like that, she'd kill you."

"And leave your child fatherless?"

"We don't even know I _can_ bear a child yet..."

After a pause, the King sighed and nodded, saying, "Then I'll leave it to you, but you have to tell me what you find out."

"I will," Atem agreed, then gave a slight jolt as his power told him his best chance was to go to her right away, right then. "I won't be joining you for breakfast today, though," he suddenly added, slowly crossing the King's room to his own door.

"You'll be resting?"

"I'll be visiting someone."

Startled silence followed him from the room, but there was no protest, so he changed into proper clothes instead of nightclothes, and headed for Isis' room, silently cursing the walk as he went. Finally, he reached her door—only for it to open before he knocked as the woman glared at him and motioned him inside the room. Motioning at a couch where she'd set out some packages of herbs, she said nothing and just _glared_ at him. Atem sat in a clear spot on the couch and she placed her hand on his lower back to heal him, helping relieve his pain.

By then, the Prince knew why she was behaving like that, so asked quietly, "How much did you see in your vision?"

"Enough to know you want to bear your partner's child, and that you, apparently, will do so, whether I help you or not," Isis replied, and Atem flinched.

Then he blinked and looked up, asking, "Wait, what do you mean, I'll do so, even without your help?"

With a sigh, the woman knelt in front of him and said, "Your Highness, it was never that the results of transforming one's body were never studied, it's that those results were very surprising and better left unknown to all but the healers who may see the results of such experiments. It was better, for both the parent and the child, to have natural parents. However, it was also discovered that many people naturally had part of both genders within them, and the opposite form took well and easily to them, regardless of their visible gender. It effectively meant that, for those people, both forms _were_, in fact, 'natural' to them, and their bodies were capable of producing children fully under such 'natural' terms. It was blatantly obvious you had a fair portion of a woman's form within you, just by how easily your body took to such a form, Prince Atem."

Slowly, Atem blinked, then a second time, then his eyes widened and he asked, "You mean I can bear a child the way any normal woman would?"

"You can, while you are in a female form," Isis replied, then rose and moved over to the herbs she'd laid out. "If my dream-vision was correct, you began the experiment—successfully—last night, and you must quickly decide on how you will allow the child to grow within you. Also, as time progresses, you will need to eat more, because you will be feeding two, not one, and some herbal teas will help give both you and your child the nutrients you need—your child will take everything it needs directly from you, so your own resources will be depleted if you do nothing to replenish them."

"...Successfully?" the Prince asked softly. "You mean...I'm already...? Just from one...?"

"It takes only one time laying with a man to become with child," Isis told him with a wry snort. "While I never expected to have such a conversation with _you_, Your Highness, I _have_ had it with every woman I've ever met, from my Healers' Apprentices to those coming to me seeking healing or advice. It takes only once, and not even necessarily from penetration—often, a woman will become with child just by having the man's release between her legs, where her opening is. It does not need to be inside her body to find its way there. On the other hand, it may take several attempts before a woman will become with child, and there are some women who never do, because they are barren. Or perhaps the man is barren. Neither you nor your partner suffer from such a thing, and the result of your chosen timing was that you became with child on your first attempt. Though, under normal circumstances, you would have needed to wait for some sign you were with child before even visiting a Healer," She began lifting certain packages of herbs from the ones laid out, and took them to a grinding bowl to mix carefully.

"What kind of sign?" he asked in mild confusion.

"In a normal woman, to miss one monthly bleeding cycle would be no indication, as stress or a random lapse may cause that, but to miss two would be the first indication, and reason to visit a Healer. For one like you...there would likely be no indication until such time as you became ill from the changes in your body to accommodate the child, assuming you were in female form often enough for the changes to take place."

While the surprised teen thought through everything she'd said up to that point, the woman prepared her mixtures and put them in separate pouches once they were ready, then set them aside and did the same with more of them.

Finally, he asked, "Will my...child...show the way a normal woman's will?"

"It will, because it must," she replied. "It would be impossible for something as large as a baby to remain invisible. Only in the fifth month—or the equivalent to that—will it begin to be impossible to hide, but in the sixth month, there will be no hiding the weight you will have gained by your child's growth, and I give you only into the fifth month because you are fit and trim and unlikely to eat so much you would gain _fat_ while with child."

A knock sounded on the door, and it opened to reveal servants with food for two. They placed everything, then left, closing the door behind them, even as Atem stared down at his hands—and word began circulating that the Prince was being scolded by one of his nobles.

"...Exactly what did you mean when you said I would have to decide how I would allow the child to grow? It sounds like it can do that itself," he finally thought to ask.

"It can indeed 'grow' of its own accord," Isis replied. "However, _you_ will influence how quickly and under what conditions it will grow."

"...I will?"

"There is a great disparity between being female at _all_ times and being female only at _some_ times, Your Highness."

Flushing, the teen sighed and said, "Then...I think I need you to tell me what my options are, since I honestly don't know them. I can't stay permanently female, though."

"Since your partner seems so keen on this, ask him to donate his energy to support you and his child," the woman replied shrewdly. "And as for your options, it depends largely on how quickly you want it to develop and what you would prefer it resemble. If you wish it to have black hair, your best bet is to produce a female form with such hair, and allow the child to develop only during those times when you have that appearance. By default, your child will take years to develop under those conditions."

Shaking his head, Atem said, "He wants me to look like myself, not someone else, so I don't think he wants anything—other than maybe for our child to be an exact copy of me. So, if appearance isn't an issue...it would be time?"

"How much energy you are able to access is also an issue," she sighed. "If you take your female form only at night, and night is shorter than day, it will take over two full cycles of the seasons before the child will develop. Your female form _must_ carry it for a time equal to nine months. The less time you spend in your female form, whichever you choose for this purpose, the longer it takes for nine months to pass. Maintaining a state of transformation for such a length of time every night would drain you, even were you transforming only the required parts to carry and care for the child."

"...So if I asked for his help...what would I be able to do?"

"It would depend largely on how much energy he is capable of donating."

"How do you mean?"

"Some individuals are capable of supplying enough energy to permanently maintain a transformation. In your case, even were it possible, it would hardly be practical. You have too many things to do, all things which require you to be male. Your other option is to have a properly female form in private, but to maintain the womb itself, and no other part of the transformation, during daytime for the first five months. After that, given your presence as a male, you may have to start accessing your female form only in private, regardless. By maintaining the womb, however, the child will be able to continue growing, even during the day, and use only slight energy compared to any other stage of transformation."

For a long time, the Prince sat still, staring in shock, then shook his head and asked, "Does my choice change what instructions you're going to give me?"

"To some degree," Isis admitted. "It isn't a decision you can make lightly, nor should you make it without first at least informing your partner of the options."

"...Priestess Isis, how long do I have before you need to start instructing me?" Atem asked quietly. "That is, how long can I actually wait before deciding?"

"As long as you aren't carelessly transforming at random moments, the first three months of time you spend as a female are...a _relaxed_ time," she said, then offered him a few of the packages she'd prepared. "Half of each as a tea each day, _while you are female_. That's important, Your Highness, because your female body and child are what need those herbs, not your male, childless body. If that means you have the mixture in a tea at midnight every night, then that's what you do. Make an effort not to miss days, even though you've barely begun your child bearing time, because your child _will_ begin to drain you more and more the larger it grows—having reserves is a _good_ thing. Also, the healthier _you_ are, the healthier your child will be at birth. Come back to me on the eighth day, before you've used the last half, so I can give you more, and if you've decided on a method, inform me of it then. Start applying it as soon as you decide so your child has some stability—its mother's body certainly has no such stability, so at least providing it with a stable pattern will help steady both you and your child."

Taking the pouches, the teen slowly nodded, then asked, "What happens to the child while I'm in my male form?"

"It is held in a frozen state. It will neither dissolve nor grow in such conditions."

"Does that harm it at all?"

"Not to any great extent."

"...So it _does_ harm it?"

Isis fell silent and just gazed at the Prince for a minute before reaching forward to caress his cheek gently. He blinked at her in surprise, even as she gave a small, wry smile. "Prince Atem, only one truly prepared to bear a child would actively consider the child's health in their decisions while the child is within them. If this is truly your desire, I'll do as much as I can to help you."

For some reason, tears came to the younger's eyes as he murmured, "Thank you."

With a nod, the woman dropped her hand and explained, "What harms the child is not you taking your male form, nor you staying in it for a length of time. What harms the child is _not taking your female form_ for an extended time. If you were to remain in your male form for an entire week, it would begin to harm the child, even in its frozen state, due to lack of nutrients. By two weeks, it would be much depleted, causing it both physical and mental harm, and by a month, you run the risk of forcing it to abort the next time you take your female form. If you intend on taking your female form at night most nights, your child should remain unharmed, even were you doing nothing else to support it during the day, such as maintaining the womb."

Considering that for a few minutes, the slender teen finally asked, "What parts of my body need to change for the child?"

"You most likely already assessed your lower regions and your breasts," she answered, and he nodded. "Did you happen to mix your male and female forms?" He blushed, but nodded, so she sighed and asked, "Is that the form you intend on using to carry the child, or do you intend on being fully female?"

"...Probably mixing it...I feel too strange sharing someone's bed when I have no male parts," Atem replied with a little sigh.

"Take that form, then," she said, making him stare. "You need to be in it for me to scan your body for things you may need to change and to verify the well-being of your child. I doubt you will have missed much, given how well you instinctively take to being female, but it would be better for me to find out now so it can be corrected immediately."

"Oh...All right," the Prince agreed, then took the form he'd used the night before. To his surprise, his whole body felt like it was tingling. "Is it supposed to tingle?" he asked as the woman held her hand to his lower belly.

"Since you don't always have a female—or partially female—form, you notice things a normal woman wouldn't. Your body is making very small changes to adapt to the child it must now support with itself, and you are sensing those minor changes." The teen had to blink as her hand moved further down, then back up to his chest, literally covering one breast as he blushed in embarrassment. She then withdrew her hand and said, "You will have to disconnect the muscle tissue from the womb. You also must allow the womb to send the appropriate messages to your breasts. Other than those two things, you have done as you needed to, and the child is in the process of joining with the wall of your womb.* You must have maintained your form for quite some time last night."

Blushing furiously, Atem replied, "I don't actually recall letting go of it, so it must have stayed until I ran out of energy." He then paused and asked, "How can I disconnect the muscles attached to the womb? Isn't that what's holding it in place so it doesn't fall out?"

Sighing in amusement, Isis shook her head. "No, Your Highness, it will _not_ fall out just because the muscles aren't attached to it. The muscles hold it in place, along with everything else which must fit in that space, by virtue of _tightening around_ it, not by _being attached_ to it. However, while skin will stretch to fit the child, do you believe your _muscles_ are capable of doing so? They need space to move."

After thinking about that for a minute, Atem had to admit she had a point, so closed his eyes to focus on fine-tuning his form for the child. He'd recovered enough energy to do so, but could feel it depleting rapidly, so once he had stabilized the form again, he said, "I can't keep this up for much longer, so could you tell me if I've fixed it, Priestess?"

She held her hand to his belly again, then moved it down, and back up as she'd done before. When she finished, she nodded and said, "You managed to connect the parts in a fairly efficient way. At another time, I can instruct you further on the messages which must be able to pass freely to other parts of your body. Do you suspect you may want to maintain the womb?"

"It depends entirely on what my partner can donate to me," the teen replied, reverting to his fully male form. "I have to talk with him about it, but for right now, I really need to rest."

Giving her head a shake, the woman said, "It would be better for you to at least make the attempt and fit it into your body now, not attempt it while I have no way of instructing you on how to cut off parts you've always associated with one another." Offering her hand to him, she said, "For now, you can use some of my energy to support you for this."

Pausing for a moment, the Prince considered what she was saying, figured she had a reason—like her vision—for insisting, and took her hand with a nod. She pushed energy into him, pushed so much in he'd be able to maintain a full transformation for at least an hour, then had him take his partial form again. From it, she had him slowly remove parts of the full form until he'd even cut the woman's opening off from the womb itself, leaving him with his normal, male body and, hidden deep in his body, the shell which would protect the child. It could still take nutrients from his body, thereby allowing the child to grow, even during the day, and it somehow left him feeling warm as he held just the one part intact. And somehow, maintaining it used almost none of the energy he still had left.

"...Thank you, Priestess Isis," he said quietly as he held one hand to his belly.

Her lips twitched as she asked dryly, "Who would have thought a ruler as efficient as you would take so well to being a mother, as well?"

At first, Atem just blinked, but then he gave a little chuckle and said, "I'm efficient, but I share more of my mother's views concerning my people than I do my father's. It seems women care more about the well-being of people at large, or most of them seem to, so...I suppose that was a sign of my 'nurturing' aspect."

Nodding, the woman told him, "Well, it is nearly time for the noon meal, so you had best go find your child's father to inform him of this." Her eyes went to the choker as she said, "I just pray you have found a partner who will stay at your side..."

"Do you have a reason to think he won't?" Atem asked in mild surprise as he rose.

Shaking her head, she said quietly, "In my dream-vision, when your child was born, he was not there, at your side, nor waiting outside the birthing chamber."

A&S

A/N: *I am assuming that, because Isis is both a Seer and a Healer, her ability works something like an x-ray or similarly to a video camera, showing her what the inside of the body actually looks like; hence how she can 'see' the fertilized ova attaching to the uterus. A normal Healer couldn't do such a thing. Kisara's power is similar, but not quite as detailed as Isis', because she isn't a Seer at the same time.

Sorry for the cliffhanger here; because I dislike cliffhangers a good deal, I'll post the next chapter right away.


	9. Chapter 9 - New Adjustments

New Adjustments

For some reason, Isis' words scared him. The result made Atem hide in Ryou's room for lunch and the whole afternoon, before he _had_ to go to the Great Hall if he wanted to eat. And he _did_ want to eat, just not any amount. He ignored Seto's eyes on him at the table, and did more playing with his food than he did eating it, causing Shada to go to his side.

"Your Highness, what ails you?" the Priest asked softly, so softly even Seto couldn't hear him.

"Just..." the Prince began, then fell silent again. Finally, he said, "This is probably the first time I've felt insecure about something, and it's too late to stop it..."

"...And you don't know how to resolve the issue?" Shada asked. At the teen's nod, he informed him, "Then the only way to assuage your insecurity is to face the person or the situation _causing_ it, and if you cannot fill yourself properly, that will become more and more difficult the longer you leave it. _Do not_ put this off, Your Highness."

"But..."

"Would it steady you if I was at your side to do it?"

Giving his head a shake as he sighed, Atem said, "No...You're right about what I have to do, but...I have to do it myself. Thank you, Priest Shada."

With a small nod, the man returned to his seat; while he was still worried, he trusted the Prince's opinion about the matter, so chose to abide his decision. When the meal ended, he was slightly surprised to see Atem leave the room, quickly followed by the King, who was frowning deeply in puzzlement and concern. Normally, the two parted ways rather than following the same path, so the Priest began to wonder if his belief that King Seto was his bed partner was indeed factual.

While Shada mused over that, Atem fled in the direction of the private areas of the Palace, not so much his or Seto's rooms, but just to another room in the area, hoping the King would lose track of him. He knew the pale teen was following him, but he wasn't ready to face him yet, so he didn't want to be caught...though, he already knew it wouldn't take long for the taller teen to catch him. The thought proved true when a hand gripped his arm, then yanked. The sound of a door slamming reached him before he was shoved against said door and pinned down by the King.

Both panted for a moment as Seto leaned his forehead against Atem's and asked, "Why are you running from me?"

"...I'm sorry..." the smaller teen whispered—and before he knew it, a few tears ran down his cheeks. He reached up to rub them away, but Seto had already seen them and even beaten the darker teen to them, cupping his cheeks as he gently brushed the tears away with his thumbs.

"For what?" he asked in puzzlement. "Are you not able to bear a child after all?"

Shaking his head, the Prince admitted, "It's not that...Isis...She can see the future, and...she saw my..._our_...child's birth...but you weren't there!" He leaned his head against Seto's chest as he wept, even as the other teen just stood stock-still and stared.

"I wasn't there? Or did she choose not to see me, or even just wasn't capable of doing so, like you and your uncle can't 'read' me?" Seto asked in a surprisingly pained tone.

"It's not like that with her," Atem replied through his tears. "If 'you' are blocked from her sight, she can't see any visions relating to you—she never would have had that vision in the _first_ place. If 'your form' is blocked from her sight, she'll see a shadowy form where you would be standing, but couldn't see your features to know your identity. She saw _no one_ in or outside the birthing chamber to serve as my child's father...I...Seto...I'm going to be alone when I give birth...That's why...I'm scared...I need to know what _I_ mean to you, what our child means to you...!"

Wrapping his arms around the smaller teen protectively, he said fiercely, "Atem, I would _never willingly_ leave your side, least of all at such a time! I don't know why she didn't see me, or at least _someone_, there, but it wasn't because I discarded you! And...I first thought, once hearing your explanation...there's a chance I won't be there because I'll be dead."

"No!" the darker teen gasped, looking up in alarm. "You...how could you die?"

"My ministers don't like me, and were willing to kill Mokuba in an attempt to control me, remember?" Seto asked softly. "I can't ignore that possibility, and I've been aware of it since before you came here. Also, if I was forced to choose between your safety or my own, I would choose yours, and walk into the lion's den if that would keep you and our child safe. I don't like to give the worst possible reason for why I wouldn't be there, but this is also a reality you need to consider now...because of the child you'll bear."

Slowly, the smaller teen shook his head, then sagged against the King as he realized he was reaching the end of his energy limit. His emotional state had drained him of a fair portion of the energy Isis had given him that morning, so without even thinking about it, he reached out and grasped the nearest energy source and pulled. And pulled, and pulled—and soon felt as good as new, even as the taller teen gasped in shock and began going slack. Finally, he stopped drawing on the excess energy and slowly looked up at the other teen, who had gone cross-eyed and exhausted.

"What...did you just...do to...me?" the paler teen groaned.

"According to Priestess Isis, I'm already with child," Atem explained quietly. "So she said we had to choose how we're going to handle the process up to the birth, and what she explained was basically that I can maintain a womb for the first five months or so without it affecting my physical appearance much, or I can just switch between male and female, but she did say it was best to decide and stabilize it to a specific pattern. It'll also take longer before the child is born the less time I spend in a female or partially female form, so...if I'm only female at night, it'll be at least double the length of time it would take a normal woman to give birth. But...the only way to basically permanently maintain such states of transformation is by drawing on someone else's energy, and she implied it was best for the energy to come from the child's 'father'. I suppose you have a lot of energy to donate to supporting your child...Usually, the amount of energy I took from you would knock the other person out."

With a snort, the older teen stood straight and said, "It would have been nice to have had some warning, but if that's what you need, take as much energy as you like. If you want to maintain a womb until the child becomes too prominent to hide under clothing, then do so, and take your other, partially female form at night. For that, I think it's best for you to choose as long as I know what to expect. What else did she say?"

The room was an unused bedchamber, so they moved over to lay in the bed as the Prince explained everything Isis had said. The King listened quietly, then promised to make the arrangements—and the two quickly fell into intense, passionate love making, Atem barely remembering to take his chosen form for the night.

A&S

A hand on his belly drew him to a waking state the next morning, and his eyes opened sleepily as Seto said, "You must really have drawn a lot of energy from me, since you're still in your mixed form now."

With a bit of a wry grin, the darker teen smoothed a hand over his chest—and found he was indeed still in his partial form. "I forgot to drink the herbal tea Isis gave me...she is going to be so angry..." he murmured, about to sit up.

"Enough," the King sighed. "I'll carry you to my room and have a servant bring hot water before breakfast. If we make the pattern so you have it in the morning, you'll still be able to have your mixed form at the time when you drink it."

After pausing to think about that for a minute, the smaller teen nodded and let Seto dress him, wrap him in the blanket, and carry him back to the more familiar rooms. On the way, the paler teen stopped the younger servant, Shizuka, and told her to bring hot water and a glass to his room. She ran off to do so, and the other two arrived at their destination soon after, where the older gently placed Atem in his chair at the table in his room and settled him there, wrapped in the blanket.

"Did you want that removed?" the paler teen asked suddenly as he watched the darker shift the blanket so his hands were free.

"No, no, it's nice and warm," the younger teen answered absently, then blinked at the King questioningly when he snorted.

"Sorry, most of us in this land would find that _too_ warm at this time of year," Seto answered the look.

"...Seto...I'm from the desert, remember?" Atem asked in dry amusement. "Your daytime temperature at this time of year is equivalent to our coldest nighttime temperature—the only reason I don't freeze all day is because your shift between night and day temperatures isn't as great or as sudden as in my homeland."

"Fine, I'll see if I can get a robe or cloak for you to keep you warm," the taller teen agreed. "Now, where did you put the herbs your Priestess gave you?"

"Under my pillow," the darker teen replied easily, closing his eyes to rest where he was, feeling pleasantly warm.

A minute later, Seto came back and asked, "If you're feeling so much of a chill when autumn is barely beginning, what will winter be like for you?"

Opening his eyes, Atem said bluntly, "I'm probably going to want a dozen blankets on my bed and won't leave it much."

"Will it be the same if you're sharing my bed?" the paler teen asked curiously.

For a moment, the younger teen had to pause and consider the question—not only would he be sharing another's body heat, but much of the night would be spent passionately. "I can't say for sure until we get to winter, but...that works for night—at least, I think it will—but Seto, I'm going to _freeze_ during the day."

"...We have fireplaces, you know...the ones in the rooms are all just covered right now, since we don't need them in summer," the King told him dryly. "Every room has a fireplace, not just the kitchens. They'll all be burning all day, every day, once the weather gets colder."

"You mean, when you get your first snowfall?" the smaller teen asked dryly in return.

"No. Well, unless the lion comes to call and we get a sudden blizzard as our first snowfall. Normally, we start the fireplaces around the end of harvest, which is a few weeks before the first snowfall. Harvest should be starting in about a week and lasts about a month, depending on when the particular produce being harvested is due."

"...Er, 'unless the lion comes to call'?"

Seto had to chuckle at that, even as Shizuka came in with the hot water and poured it into a cup. She then produced a little, metal globe with small holes all over it as she said, "This is raspberry chamomile tea to flavor the water, in case you need it!" Setting it on the table, she turned to leave.

"What's 'raspberry'?" Atem asked blankly, making Shizuka turn back to stare at him as the King gave a wryly amused look at both of them.

"How's the harvest if you had enough for something as frivolous as tea?" the older teen asked of the servant in mild amusement.

"The northern border-fields are going to come due at the usual time, but in the south, they imported some which come due twice in the year. They produce hearty crops, and their first time due was early to mid summer—most of that fed the local peasants, but some spares which were dried were sent to us as a gift. As soon as the kitchens got them and saw they were dried, they said it's best if they go in teas," the girl explained.

"In other words, you'll have to wait for about two more weeks before tasting our raspberries," Seto told the Prince. "You haven't had any, yet, but they're a red berry made up of a collection of tiny seed-sacks stuck together, and each 'collection' is about the size of a man's fingertip. Some are smaller, but very few grow larger than an average man's thumb."

"...Ah. Then, I look forward to tasting them," Atem said wryly. "Thank you, Shizuka." His gaze then went back to his partner as he asked, "So, what about the lion you mentioned before?"

Shizuka left as the taller teen offered one of the packages of herbs to the darker teen, who began preparing his tea as the King said, "Winter in these parts generally has two ways of reaching us off the mountains—one is calm and quiet, which we call 'the lamb', and one is furious and loud, which we call 'the lion'. Similarly, if the winter 'comes in like the lion', it will 'leave like the lamb', and if it 'comes in like the lamb', it tends to 'leave like the lion'. So, if the lion comes to call first, we'll have a sudden, shocking cold and heavy snow dropped on us before full winter sets in, and we won't have the transition we're used to. Such winters are some of the most brutal, but then we tend to warm quickly and spring will come a little earlier, because it'll be the lamb leaving."

Blinking, the darker teen asked worriedly, "How often does that happen?" He then took a sip of the raspberry herbal tea—and murmured appreciatively, "This is rather tasty, considering what the herbs usually taste like alone."

Reaching forward to take Atem's cheeks in his hands, Seto replied, "It generally runs on five or ten cycles of the seasons, and I hate to say this, but the last time we had one was nine or ten cycles ago. There's a good chance we'll get one this year."

"...And...how cold is it going to get?"

"It depends on if we also get a Wolf Winter or just the lion."

"...Wolf Winter?" the Prince asked warily.

"A winter so bitterly cold the fires put off cold light and the wolves are so short on food, they resort to attacking and killing humans," the King explained. "Such winters are fairly rare. Our records may show a few of them, but the last one was before I was born, and just by the stories handed down, they seem to run on thirty cycles of the seasons, give or take some. I know about them, and what to do if one comes up during my lifetime, but I've never experienced one personally, so I have no idea what effect it'll have on _me_, let alone on _you_."

"...How long does the cold last? All winter?" Atem asked as he shuddered. "I'll die of cold if that happens..."

"Obviously, you're not going to die, since your Priestess saw you give birth to our child," the older teen pointed out. "Either we won't have one, or even if we do, you'll both live through it." He then let his hands fall from the darker teen's face.

The words made the younger smile faintly as he drank more of the warm tea. He'd never really liked or disliked teas before, so they had always been a non-entity to him, something he could do without or not. Now, somehow, the warmth spreading through his body with the tea felt different, and he very much desired more of the warmth. When he finished the first cup, he tried making another tea without Isis' herbs, and while it had a pleasing warmth, it was nothing like the herbal one.

"That's odd..." he murmured absently.

"What is?" Seto asked as he looked up from a book he'd taken off a shelf while Atem had been experimenting with the drink.

"I wonder what about those herbs seemed so..." the smaller teen began.

"Probably, your body knows it needs them," the paler teen replied, going back to his book.

A moment later, the door opened as Mokuba began, "Big Brother, the—" He then stopped to stare at Atem, then at his brother, whose brow was raised. The boy then frowned and asked, "Isn't it a little early for Atem to be here, and why's he in your seat?"

"He's there because I put him there," the older brother snorted. "He got some herbs from Priestess Isis because he's feeling the cold."

"It's not cold yet, though," the boy said in confusion.

"To people from the desert, it is," the Prince replied dryly. "Jonou and Honra, and others like them, probably won't feel the chill as much, but the Priests are going to start layering their clothing shortly."

The boy was obviously suspicious, but when he met with the Priests later in the day, Akhenaten had double-layered his robes and Shada was wearing a hood to protect his otherwise bald head. The issue was basically resolved, especially as they reached the end of the week and all the Egyptians had doubled, if not tripled, the layers they wore. On the eighth day, Atem had to go back to see Isis, so went first thing in the morning, just after breakfast.

The first thing she asked was, "Well, have you decided or not?"

Sitting on her couch as she prepared more herbs for him, he said, "I—and we—thought it was best to maintain the womb, at least, and he turned out to have more energy than expected. Basically, until I show too much to hide the child, I'll have the womb you showed me in place, and take my other form at night, when I'm with my partner. He can help me maintain that indefinitely. After that, I don't have any other choice but to be entirely male during the day and take my other form at night."

Isis blinked and asked in surprise, "_How_ much energy does he have?"

"Er...enough that I can drink my fill and he still has enough left to bed me thoroughly for the whole night..." Atem replied, flushing bright red.

The woman's eyes went wide as she murmured, "Ra, your partner must be a God in a human shell..."

"No, he's just a very powerful human," the teen answered.

"Very well," the woman said, handing the pouches to him. "Come back in eight days again, before you use the last half."

"...Won't that leave me two unused halves?" the teen asked in surprise.

"This is deliberate, so that you have some to spare if I can't provide you with the herbs on time for some reason. However, since the trade agreements have been going well so far, and even the Pharaoh approves, our party will be splitting in a few weeks," she informed him. "Myself and my apprentice, Merik, and Bhakura will stay with you, and Mahad and Mana will come from the capital. They should arrive at about the same time the rest leave, so once our party for the winter has stabilized, it may be best to tell them about your condition."

"...Will you tell my father?" he asked quietly.

"...Only when you return to your homeland," she answered.

"When I...?"

"Yes, Your Highness. I don't know the circumstances behind it, but I am certain you will give birth in the same chamber you, yourself, were born in. I would know it anywhere. By then, since you wish to bear this child, it will be much too far along to stop, unless your father and mother wish to be guilty of abuse and murder."

"...Would they actually feel that way about me?" Atem asked quietly.

"I would hope not, but the Pharaoh probably _will_ be angry to find his son will bear another man's child. Waiting until you return home will just help him temper that anger," the woman explained.

"So...what else do I need to know?" the Prince asked. "Especially to keep my child healthy in such a cold environment?"

"Dress warmly," she replied shrewdly. "That would be more true for you than for the rest of us. You must also be sure to find and eat those dishes made with more produce than meat, bread, or potato. Northern nations seem to favor such heavy—and nutritionally limited—fare, but you and your child need more than that. While you can still practice most of your regular skills, including martial ones, for the first four months or so, you _cannot_ continue to do things too active as the child grows, not while in your other form, and not while maintaining a womb. Its weight will weigh you down, but also, if you take a blow to the belly, it may cause the child to abort. Magic is safe enough for, and even beneficial to, an unborn child, but physically, some activities can cause it real harm. As winter sets in, drink will come to be much more common here, but you mustn't have any large quantity—unfortunately, that means you can't resort to drink to warm you, since you can only have small quantities, or preferably, none at all."

"There are only a few drinks I even like in this land. Ours are much easier to take," the teen answered in mild amusement. "Anything else?"

"While you are with child, you won't have any way to prevent illness," Isis told him in a serious tone. His eyes widened before he blinked in surprise. "While you have your only male form—without the womb—your body will protect itself from illness; however, the very thing which protects us from illness considers a child inside its mother's body 'an illness', because it isn't 'part' of her body. In order to bear the child, those functions in a body must cease, and cannot protect either from illness. Come to me immediately if you feel even slightly ill during this time, even if all you have is a sniffle, and don't over-exert yourself or be careless with your health."

"All right...I'll keep that in mind, and I'll talk to him about some things we'll have to adapt. Thank you, Priestess," Atem told her gratefully. She just nodded.


	10. Chapter 10 - The Father

The Father

About a week had passed since Atem had started having tea in Seto's room early in the morning, and Mokuba was getting very suspicious about exactly what kind of relationship the two had. While the first morning they'd brought in fresh raspberries had been hilarious, just two days ago, it didn't change how odd their new pattern was, and Atem seemed to be behaving strangely in other ways, too. It was nothing most people would see; the strangest moments were ones when he saw Atem sitting or standing still, holding a hand to his belly with an odd, little smile on his face. He'd decided to find out what was really going on, once and for all, so thought he could sneak into Atem's room at night to force him to explain.

Only, when he got to the older Prince's room, no one was there. It was obviously the middle of the night, but no one was there.

Sounds came through the door from his brother's room, sounds like gasping and moaning, drawing Mokuba to the connecting door. Carefully opening it until he could see the two—they were in Seto's bed—it took the boy a minute to process what he was seeing.

They were both nude, other than the choker Atem wore—and the binds. One was tied around his neck, below the choker, another was tying his wrists together behind his back, a ribbon was tied at the base of his manhood, and he even wore a blindfold! The Prince knelt over his brother's lap, knees to either side of the paler teen's hips, and it was obvious there was at least one cord coming from a place there shouldn't have been anything. As he watched, the smaller teen lowered himself on the King's manhood—there was no mistaking it at that angle—then raised himself, arched back and with only the taller teen's hands at his hips to steady him. The sounds he was making were something the boy couldn't define, somehow frantic, and there was a rather satisfied expression on Seto's face, especially when Mokuba heard the darker teen beg his 'Master' to 'let him come'.

A hand on his head made the boy start and stare up at Shada, who watched the two impassively for a moment before pushing Mokuba back and pulling the door closed.

"Shouldn't you stop them?" the younger boy asked, his expression horrified.

Looking down at the boy for a moment, the man realized he couldn't just leave, so sat down in Atem's desk chair and said, "I fairly expected to find them like that when I came, and had already resigned myself to it."

"To your Prince being—being—tortured, tied up—" He stopped and stared as the man held a hand up, a vaguely amused expression on his face.

"I've come to the conclusion that you northern people shy away from your sexuality, as though it's wrong," the Priest said, giving Mokuba's head a little pat. "In Egypt, we tend to _favor_ it, and make a habit of teaching others to please their partners—what you see them doing is something nearly every man in Egypt has tested at least once. Some like it more than others, but even I have found myself in both the giving and the receiving position with my partner. I daresay it was _Prince Atem_ who told your brother to handle him in such a way to _begin_ with. He may well be one of those men who prefers to be in that position, not because the King forced him to be in it."

"Don't you all basically think he's Seto's slave? That's what the choker he's wearing is—basically, because it's our family's crest, my brother marked Atem as his property," Mokuba announced with a glare.

Shada raised a brow at the new information, and said wryly, "Did you know, in our land, that is a marriage proposal? I suspect King Seto knew that when he had it designed to fit Prince Atem so perfectly, and we knew already our Prince had a lover, but he—and apparently, his lover as well—were very good at hiding his identity under shields. We know men can't marry other men, nor women other women, so we find ways of making such promises without a proper marriage—and everyone in Egypt would know, just by looking, that the Crown Prince had found a permanent lover."

"Then shouldn't Atem have something made for Seto, too?" the boy frowned.

"It depends on them. His Highness is...somewhat feminine, and Seto is obviously a dominant male. In such a pairing, the result is most often what you see—the feminine one takes the role of the female, so also bears the marks of it. My partner and I, however, are much more equally balanced, and often reverse our roles, so both of us bear a twin mark. We just keep it very well hidden, and Prince Atem, like most 'women', chooses to bear the mark—and display it," the Priest explained.

For a long time, Mokuba fell silent, then asked, "Don't you hate him? Seto, I mean, for kidnapping your Prince?"

To Mokuba's surprise, Shada sighed lightly and said, "Some wish to, and the Vizier is amongst them. Honestly, though, while I don't entirely _trust_ him, I haven't found any reason to _hate_ him, and he's done a remarkable job of giving our Prince rights and much freedom. If this is something His Highness wants, without solid evidence of any wrongdoing on King Seto's part, I don't feel we have a right to intervene."

"_That's_ 'wrongdoing'," the boy spat, motioning at the door to the other room.

"Even if it was the Prince who wanted that?" the Priest asked with a raised brow.

Flushing, Mokuba admitted, "I guess that can't really be my brother's fault..."

Reaching over to pat the boy's head, Shada said, "Thank you for looking out for our Prince, though, young Prince Mokuba."

"Do you know why Atem would be behaving strangely?" the boy suddenly asked.

"In what way?" the man asked with a puzzled frown.

"He keeps getting weird teas from Priestess Isis, and drinks them in my brother's room, usually wrapped in a big blanket—he says it's the cold—and I see him sometimes with a sort of happy, dreamy look on his face, but he's not doing anything except holding a hand to his belly," the younger Prince explained, showing the man what he meant with his hand.

The Priest blinked, then blinked again, then his eyes widened as he murmured, "Could he have taken...?"

"What?" the boy asked in confusion.

Suddenly, Shada's expression became wryly amused as he said, "Well, that would also explain some of his chaotic emotional responses."

"What would?" Mokuba asked again, but the man just rose. "Hey, what's wrong?"

"Nothing, technically," Shada answered, leading the boy from Atem's room and closing the door behind him. "But when you find out about what the two of them have done, don't hate them, all right?"

"Why would I—" he began—but the Priest was already gone.

A&S

The next day, Mokuba didn't join them for the morning meal, claiming he wanted to be left alone for awhile, and didn't join them for the noon or evening meals, either. In fact, he was avoiding everyone. Since no one understood why, they let him be, other than Seto telling servants to bring food to his brother so he didn't starve. In the end, it took Mokuba a few days to emerge again—just to see something he didn't want to see, something which sent him running to Isis.

A&S

After eating the evening meal that day, Atem suddenly started feeling dizzy and tired, so headed for his room—but had to lean on the walls a few times on the way. He felt odd, but didn't recognize the feeling as something specific, so didn't realize his thought processes were impaired. It didn't even reach his mind that he should have gone right to Isis, not to his own room, and even when he collapsed on his bed, he didn't think of it, just wrapped his arms around his head and tried to make everything go away. His head was really beginning to hurt.

Suddenly, something soothing pierced the pain, tiredness, and dizziness, slowly bringing him back to an alert state—where he looked up and saw a very angry Healer by the name of Isis staring down at him with her lips pursed.

She lifted her hand off his forehead and said, "You were supposed to come to me immediately. If Prince Mokuba hadn't seen you struggling to get back here and come to get me, you could have harmed yourself or your child, possibly even taken your own life, the more you fell to the poison you'd been given."

"Sorry...My mind was—" he began, starting to sit up.

Isis put a hand on his shoulder and physically pushed him back down. "Rest," she ordered.

Once she was sure the teen would stay laying down, she got up and went to the door connecting to Seto's room. That, she opened, causing the young King to stop pacing in surprise, and by the expression on her face, he thought he should just obey when she motioned him into Atem's room. As he stepped into the room, the Priestess motioned him to the Prince's side, even as she grabbed the chair from the desk and moved it over so she could sit beside the bed. Slowly, Seto sat down at his lover's side, but both remained silent.

"Let me be clear on this," the woman began, glaring at the two. "If you expect your child to survive, you can't afford to give the nobles another chance to poison Prince Atem. You're only lucky they didn't use something as deadly to the unborn child as foxglove or nightshade—those almost certainly would have slain both in less than an hour under these conditions, where the 'mother's' body _cannot_ protect itself from any kind of danger while with child."

Both blanched, then traded looks before Seto looked back at her and asked warily, "What made you call me in here for this?"

"Priest Shada caught young Prince Mokuba watching your escapades a few nights ago. He expected to find the two of you in such a position—and when the young Prince offered certain information to him, he realized very quickly His Highness was with child. As such, he came to inform me of the father's identity," she explained acidly.

It was clear she was angry, but to be fair, Atem asked, "Are you angry?"

"Angry?" she asked, pursing her lips. "I am _furious_, Your Highness, though likely not for the reason _you_ think I am." Both blinked in surprise as she then went on, "When I see a vision, normally, I see no _conclusion_, only an _event_. If I see a _conclusion_, the event _must happen in exactly that way_. I saw our Prince give birth to a healthy child in our homeland. As such, the child _must_ come to be, and His Highness showed great responsibility for that life as well. As of that moment, the father's identity was irrelevant."

Slowly, the two puzzled through what she was saying, then Seto asked tentatively, "Are you saying you approve, or just that you don't have the right to stop it?"

The Priestess sighed and closed her eyes, even as the tension began seeping away from her. When her eyes opened, she said, "In my vision, you were not in Egypt with Prince Atem while your child was being born."

Heaving a sigh, Seto answered, "Atem told me. The one thing which jumped into my mind was that I may not be alive then. I'd never leave his side willingly, let alone if it was time for our child to be born, so...short of disaster or death, I would be there."

At that, her gaze became sad, and her eyes went to Atem as she asked, "You would still bear the child of a man who may not even live long enough to see or hold it?"

"I'm hoping things won't turn out so badly, but if they do...our child will be all I'll have left of him. Women use such reasoning all the time, so I don't see any reason why I can't use it as well," the Prince pointed out, also sighing in sorrow.

After a moment, Isis gave a small, wry chuckle. "Yes, I suppose you have a point. And since you seem to be more female than male at the moment, even _without_ a child in your body, I should have realized you would have the same reasoning. I officially give up. As much as I may want to dislike you, King Seto, I would be doing both of you a great disservice if I kept holding on to that." Her sharp eyes then went to Seto as she added, "But I am deadly serious about keeping poisons away from Prince Atem. His body can't fight them, so not only will they take hold easily and quickly, but they'll act faster than under normal circumstances. The same is true of illness. Didn't he tell you when I told him about this?"

"My main concern was being able to stay warm, so I didn't really mention the rest—I'd been planning on taking care of that myself," Atem admitted.

"Let this be a lesson to you, then," Isis told him dryly. "If you intend on sharing as much of your child bearing time with your child's father as possible, you have to tell him what he needs to know as the one responsible for your well-being."

"On that note, would you happen to know a magic to try to bind the child to its mother, even if something causes it damage?" the King asked suddenly.

"Why? Are you intending on harming the Prince?" the Priestess asked with a raised brow—and was surprised when the pale teen faced her with an even, imploring gaze.

He said, "My court just tried to poison him. There's no guarantee they won't attack him physically at a time when I can't intercept them, and while his sword skills exceed mine, that doesn't mean he can fight off any enemy while waiting for me. Anything to help tie them together so they can survive longer..."

For a long time, the woman was silent. Finally, she sighed. "Step over to your chamber with me, King Seto. It seems there are a good many things I need to share with you as the child's father, things you need to know and understand about your child's mother." Her eyes went to Atem sharply as she said, "Stay in bed and rest, Your Highness—that isn't optional. Your body is weaker than you think at the moment."

As she and the King were rising, a knock sounded on the door, only for Mokuba to push it open—and lead Seto's Chief Healer, Kisara, into the room.

As Kisara looked at Atem, she suddenly sighed and said, "Prince Mokuba, have a servant bring a meal for Prince Atem. He needs to replenish his resources." The boy ran out again as the other three stared at Kisara. The woman with long, silver-white hair said, "As a Healer, Priestess, you know very well he needs to eat. Right now, that's all I can tell, but I'd like to know the whole story once you've spoken with the King."

Pausing for a moment, Isis then sighed and gave a little nod before leaving the room with Seto, and Kisara sat at the Prince's side. When she closed her eyes, he knew he was being scanned, and debated transforming his body back to fully male form—but as her brow creased, he knew it was too late already, and she'd found the womb. A moment later, she lifted her hand to his forehead, then let it slowly drift down his body, making him wonder if Isis had missed something in her healing.

Her eyes then opened and she asked—the _last_ thing he expected her to. "Is your Priestess also your people's Chief Healer, or near to that in rank?"

He blinked, then blinked again, eyes clearly questioning—and Mokuba came back inside to announce, "Shizuka is going to bring a meal. How's Atem, Healer Kisara?"

Looking up at the boy, she said, "He was well-tended by the Priestess, but it seemed she was rushed and forgot to close a few energy cycles she had placed. I suspect I would have done much the same in my urgency if it had been you or the King who had been poisoned instead of Prince Atem." Her eyes went back to the darker teen as she said, "And to answer your question, I asked Priestess Isis to explain the situation to me properly, so I would rather not ask things directly until she can explain it by a Healer's terms. The higher her rank, the easier she and I will understand each other."

Sighing, Atem admitted, "Priestess Isis is also our Chief Healer."

For the rest of the time while the three waited, first for the food, then for Isis and the King to return to the room, they were quiet. Atem had finished eating and the dishes were taken away some time before the other two rejoined them, and for a bit, they had some general conversation. Finally, it was getting late and Mokuba went to bed, leaving the two Healers, the King, and the Prince alone.

"I knew Prince Atem had a few distinctly female internal parts, but those parts didn't include a woman's womb, nor could I find any way for said womb to become with child," Kisara said as she looked at Isis, being very openly blunt. It was a Healer's prerogative, after all, so the two men could only sigh.

The other Chief Healer, on the other hand, replied, "That would be because Mages, Priests, and the Royal Family of Egypt—all those who learn magic—have the ability to use transformation magic. Typically, said magic would be used to escape when under attack in our own homes, but when a man takes a woman's body or a woman takes a man's, all of the functions of their transformation's gender also function. Also, by studies our people did on those transformations, we came to realize a fair number of people carry part of the opposite gender in them, regardless—His Highness is one such, as you noticed. By those terms, not only can he _become_ with child while transformed, but he can _carry it safely_ to its birth. The child will only grow while he has a female or partially female form which includes a womb, or by using his current state of being male while maintaining _nothing but_ the womb, which uses significantly less energy than any degree of full or partial transformation. As such, I have been instructing both the 'mother' and the 'father'—our Prince and your King—on how to go about having a child under these unusual circumstances."

Rather than being completely stunned, Kisara seemed shocked, but said nothing right away, even as she took some time to think through what she'd been told. By the time she spoke again, even her shock seemed to have faded as she said, "Then, speaking as a woman living in such a cold environment, I should help you as well, if you truly intend on doing this. Cold is one of the most likely killers in winter, even in noble households, of mothers with child and of the unborn children they carry."

"I'm surprised you're taking this so well," Seto commented in a dry tone.

Crossing her arms, the white haired woman replied as dryly, "Most women would actually find it rather 'just' for a man to bear a child—to find out how we feel and what we have to go through to do so. Yes, I was surprised to know it could, in fact, happen, but nearly every woman I know has wished they could make their husbands carry their own children. In this case, that would be even more true, because a future ruler who knows even a small part of a woman's hardship is a ruler who will consider _us_ more."

A long silence followed as Atem looked faintly amused, but then he asked, "What if it's not a 'hardship' to me because I _chose_ to do it?"

"Just wait until your body starts making proper adjustments for the child," Kisara replied with a wolfish grin, making Isis chuckle. "Just wait until you start finding you aren't able to eat certain foods for no apparent reason, or that you wish for the strangest of foods together at once, or having mood swings you don't understand, yourself, or having to carry so much weight you have to struggle to move around. And let us not forget the physical pain of having something the size of a melon come out through a part of your body only large enough to fit a man's length." As the Prince turned a little pale and ill-looking and the young King gaped at her, she smirked and asked, "Are you still so certain you wish to bear a child, Your Highness?"

For a moment, the darker teen just stared at her, then closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath. After a minute, he opened his eyes again and said simply, "Yes."

At that, Kisara gave an impressed whistle, even as Seto turned to look at him and ask, "Are you sure, after hearing all that?"

"Are you going to back out _now_, after all this?" Atem asked him with a raised brow. "_I_ have to go through it all, not _you_. And let me just tell you that, if you desert me _now_, I _will_ kill you at the first available opportunity, duel agreement aside."

The King paled and held his hands up in a surrender motion as he said, "I'm not going to desert you—_either_ of you. I just meant that I'd accept it if you wished to end this now."

Kisara turned to look at Isis and said, "I have new respect for your Prince. If things here ever collapse, I'll join your people in the south, with all my abilities and loyalty. Tell that to your Pharaoh when you next trade word off with him."

"I can do that, but some of us will be here all winter without contact with our people, so what I can do or not depends largely on when Priest Mahad arrives," Isis replied.

"Who?" Seto asked, looking at the woman in confusion.

"The Priest who trained Prince Atem in his Mage skills," Isis explained. "He and his Mage's apprentice, Mana, will be coming here. Obviously, I have to stay, along with my apprentice, and my brother and Bhakura are staying here. Since we're finalizing the trade agreement later this week, the others will return to Egypt with the documents and begin making the needed arrangements. They should be leaving about a week after the agreement is finalized, and if luck is with us, Priest Mahad and young Mana should arrive a couple of days before they leave. If we have that couple of days, we'll be in contact with the Pharaoh once more, and if not...it waits for spring."

"And...the reason for the switch is...?" the young King asked in puzzlement.

"He is our strongest Mage," Isis replied. "Better to have one strong Mage on guard duty than several people strong in many things, like the Vizier."

Nodding, the pale teen said, "I'll let some of my trusted people know, then."

Finally, that was all resolved, so they turned to talking about how to keep the Prince and his child sufficiently warm over the winter.


	11. Chapter 11 - Cold Winter

Cold Winter

Sure enough, the trade agreement was complete half a week later, and about half a week after that, Mahad and Mana arrived. Seto was shocked to find Atem greeting them with hugs, and was at first suspicious of the older man, but realized very quickly that their relationship was like family, nothing more. Mana quickly showed she was a lot like the Prince's sister, even though she insisted on calling him 'Your Highness', and Mahad fell somewhere between an older brother/mentor and what the King felt would be considered a 'good father'. They had come reasonably prepared for winter, as well.

Though, it was perfectly annoying to Seto to find the whole group of Egyptians, this time including Atem, vanishing into the Vizier's room for a whole night—it meant he didn't get the time he wanted with his lover. Oddly enough, it wasn't Atem he was upset with, it was the _rest_ of the group; he knew the Prince had never actually been able to speak with his father before that night, and had only gotten word of his father's thoughts and wishes through the others. He didn't understand why they'd had to take him away at night when they could have made the arrangements for a time during the day. Or just included Atem prior to then so the meeting could have been shorter.

In the morning, a wryly amused Atem knocked on Seto's outside door, and the older teen opened it—only to see Mahad and Mana with him. He blinked, then looked at Atem and said, "Shizuka brought your tea already. I wasn't even sure you were going to come today, since you spent all night in a conference with your countrymen."

"I'd _love_ to sleep, _believe_ me," the Prince replied wryly. "In the meantime, I need to warm up, so where's my usual blanket?"

Mahad just sighed as Mana giggled, so Seto motioned at the table. Atem was by the King's chair right away, and said King obediently lifted the blanket off it to wrap it around his lover, who then sat and began working on his hot water and herbs for the tea Isis had given him. The other two stepped into the room and moved over to the table to watch the rather odd display, but didn't sit because—unlike Atem, apparently—they hadn't been invited to do so yet.

"Forgive me if this seems rude, but that certainly looked like a well-rehearsed set of actions between you," Mahad commented. He had long, dark hair under a Mage's gold headdress and wore mainly white robes with a puzzling ring around his neck. His apprentice dressed much like him, but her headdress was copper and covered only part of her head, and her robes were shorter, falling only to the knee, not to the ground.

Atem paused in his tea-making to look up and say, "Oh, right, you haven't been formally introduced, yet. King Seto, meet Priest Mahad, a Mage who is second to none, and his apprentice, Mana, and Priest Mahad, Mana, meet the new King, Seto." He then went back to his tea as the King sighed.

"And...why did you bring them to my personal chambers?" the paler teen asked of the darker one in his chair.

"Mahad, ask what you've been meaning to ask since you got here," Atem said.

The Priest blinked, then said, "I'd thought I would do that in private."

"This is private enough," the Prince replied simply.

After a silence, the Priest asked, "Why are maintaining a partially female transformed state, Your Highness?"

Seto held his hand to his head and groaned, "Your people are starting to scare me, Atem. I think the Vizier is the only one who doesn't know, and that's only because he relies on mind-reading, I'm sure." The words made Mahad's eyes widen. The King then motioned at the two chairs already at the table and said, "Sit, both of you."

As they sat, Atem replied, "Actually, that's only half the reason Uncle doesn't know. Yes, he relies on mind-reading to find out what he wants to know—there are blessed few people like you and me whom he can't read. But do you _really think_ he wouldn't know unless the others have been deliberately keeping it from him, storing that knowledge away in the tiny parts of their minds he can't read?"

"...Come to think of it, if Priest Shada _saw_ us together, why _didn't_ he tell the Vizier?" the older teen asked thoughtfully.

"He didn't see anything 'wrong' with what he saw," the smaller teen shrugged, taking a drink from his tea and leaning back to let his eyes slide shut. "Better," he murmured.

"Hey, this might sound rude, Your Majesty, Your Highness, but are you lovers?" Mana suddenly asked, her gaze eager and interested.

"Mana!" Mahad yelped.

"It's all right," Seto sighed, making Mahad look at him in something like angry horror. Holding his hands up in a surrender motion, he said, "I'm assuming Atem wanted you here because you need to know. It's not as simple as just being 'lovers'. Priest Mahad, you wanted to know why your Prince is maintaining a partially female transformation. The reason is because he's with child—my child."

A long, stunned silence filled the room, then Mana squealed, "Great Ra, Your Highness, you're going to have a baby!" A moment later, she was hugging the other teen around the neck as she giggled.

Holding a hand to his head, Mahad asked her, "Aren't you missing a big part of this equation, Mana? Is it really all right for our Prince's child to be the Nihon King's?"

Mana turned to look at him and asked in return, "Why isn't it? The Prince's baby will have the rights to both thrones, so it works in our favor, doesn't it?"

"For exactly that reason, it can also work against us, depending on which parent the child favors," Mahad replied pointedly.

"There's _no_ chance of that," Atem answered, making the other two look at him in surprise. "Isis saw a vision. I'm going to give birth to my child in my homeland...alone."

Both their eyes widened, then Mana looked at Seto accusingly, so he said, "I'll probably be dead at that point. If I'm not, I don't know, but it would be really hard to keep me from my own child's birth if I'm still alive."

"Oh..." the teenaged girl murmured sadly.

With a sigh, Mahad said, "I'll keep this from the Vizier for the next day, then. Prince Atem, if you're sure you want to go through with this, I'll wish you the best."

And the man was true to his word.

A&S

The day after Mahad and Mana spoke with Atem and Seto, six of the Egyptians headed home with the proper trade documents—or rather, they had already given the documents to the Pharaoh, but only their own countrymen knew that. The King warned them to guard their backs, since they didn't only have to worry about bandits, but some of the military who were under the control of nobles who didn't want such an agreement may also try to attack them. About a week later, the harvest was pretty much done, and people began preparing to mostly shut down for winter, even in the Palace.

It only took an extra week for snow flurries to fall overnight one night—and midday the next day, a blizzard blew in, causing everyone to run for shelter, even as cold wind howled through the Palace halls. Atem pretty much stayed in Seto's bed, and even the King rarely left it, claiming he had almost nothing to do during a blizzard, anyway. As such, they spent much of their time passionately, with the older of the two sheathed in his lover's body, even as he learned to hold back his release, even without help from a ribbon. In the end, the blizzard lasted nearly four full days, then calm, sunny, cold set in, but to those from the north, they had a moderate temperature.

From that point on, the days were mainly overcast as snows fell, and every week to week and a half, there was another blizzard which lasted a few to several days. A month and a half passed like that—then the worst happened.

When the King woke one morning, it was to feel cold, even as Atem trembled against him and the younger's arms wrapped tightly around his belly. Oddly enough, he felt no warmth from the fire still burning in the hearth, and slowly realized what had happened, why it was so cold.

Wolf Winter.

Really, he didn't want to move, but felt he had to—there was no way the Prince would be able to. So, rising, he shuddered at the chill, even as the smaller teen made a plaintive noise and promptly curled into a tight ball under the blankets. Quickly, he began piling robes, cloaks, spare blankets, and anything else he could reach, on the bed on top of Atem, and was debating getting some things from the other room, when the door to his room opened.

Shizuka came in, fully dressed in outdoor clothes, with the water she usually brought, but even it wasn't giving off any heat. "Drink it quickly, or it'll turn cold and even freeze. The Matron said this was a Wolf Winter, so we had to work quickly to warm the Palace for everyone, so I really had to make an excuse to bring this to you," she told the King. "I hope it helps His Highness." She set it on the table, then left.

In the end, Seto couldn't wait for Atem to get up, so made the tea himself—he'd watched the darker teen do it often enough—and took it to his lover. It was still warm, so rather than trying to coax the other up, the paler teen just seized him around the shoulders and yanked him to a sitting position, then put the cup to his lips. The warm liquid started rejuvenating the other teen, and they promptly crawled back into bed together and went back to sleep, too cold even to think about pleasure. Meals also went by the wayside due to the cold, and almost no one ate the morning or noon meals.

By mid-afternoon, the Palace was somewhat warmer, within manageable levels for northerners, so they began getting up to do their usual activities, cursing the bitter cold as they did. With coaxing from friends (or, as in Atem's case, his lover), even those who weren't used to cold, let alone such deep cold, struggled out of bed and to the Great Hall for the evening meal. Everyone wore outdoor clothing, to greater or lesser degrees, and relied on the proximity of others for extra warmth—the chairs at the tables in the Great Hall were clustered together, gathering greater heat in pockets around the room.

Very quickly, everyone began to resent clear days and bless the days of blizzards, since during the bitter cold of a Wolf Winter, no heat came from the sun, and clear days were much, much colder than cloudy ones. Since the only time the sky was 'cloudy' was during a snowstorm or blizzard during the Wolf Winter, or during this particular one, it became a boon for snow and ice to pile up around walls. After two weeks of such cold, the Palace began warming with the added insulation of the snow piled around the walls, and servants carefully dug out only doors and gates, not even windows.

A month after the Wolf Winter set in, new trouble found them.

A&S

_Cold._

Somehow, it penetrated his mind, and even though part of him wanted to just give in and go back to sleep, something forced him to wake. It was a tugging sensation from his belly, and it took him a moment to realize—he was carrying a child in his body!

Atem forced his eyes open—only to see a clear, starry sky above him, and there were the rough sides of a hole as well. They were white, the color of the snow which had been piling up outside the Palace for over a month, the same color as the stars. A bright, pale moon hovered above the landscape, and the Prince finally realized he was outside, laying in a snow bank...in the middle of a Wolf Winter...at night...on a clear night...wearing...what?

When he tried to sit up, he realized his body was too cold and he couldn't move—he couldn't even feel his arms and legs, let alone hands and feet.

Howling sounded some distance away, then stopped, and the next sound he heard was snarling and growling _much_ close to him.

_Wolves_.

_Wolf Winter._

_A winter so bitterly cold the fires put off cold light and the wolves are so short on food, they resort to attacking and killing humans._

He distinctly recalled Seto saying that.

In other words, not only did he have the cold to worry about, but he had _wolves_ to worry about, too. According to people he'd asked, wolves were every bit as dangerous as the desert lions, especially since they could also hunt either alone or in a pack. This time, it sounded like they were in a pack.

What could he do to protect himself?

_Warmth._

_Heat._

_Fire._

_Ra!_

Closing his eyes again, the Egyptian Prince focussed on the essence of Ra. An eye blazed and glowed on his forehead as energy began rippling around him, and the rippling energy quickly took form. Flames rippled, burst, and flowed from him, surrounding and shrouding him in purple, blue, white, yellow, and orange. The heat was so intense outside him that the snow began melting, and his own body began warming and thawing, the feeling returning to his arms and legs, causing them to tingle painfully. It hurt, but it was also a relief, since it meant they hadn't gotten so bad he'd lose them, and as soon as he'd mostly warmed, the strange, tug-like sensation from his belly stopped as well.

Finally, his body warmed enough for him to move, so Atem slowly sat up, causing the flames at his back to ripple and surge away from him in wing-like shapes. Glancing down at himself, he saw he wore nothing but his nightclothes, meaning there was only a thin layer of cloth and his choker shielding him from the cold. The landscape in front of him was one he didn't know—he'd never seen anything besides the Palace grounds in Nihon—and there was nothing like a Palace in his view. Then again, it _was_ night.

As snarling sounded from behind him, he turned to look, and saw them—the wolves were pacing just outside the circle of light cast by the flames burning around him. It was clear they weren't ready to give up on him, but the light he was now generating made them wary. They were mangy brown and gray dog-like animals, starving, frosted—and he couldn't see any of them small enough to count even as a year-old pup. Like all starved creatures, 'sanity', or the animal's version of it, didn't work, and they would probably resort to attacking him, regardless of the light and heat surrounding him.

Thankfully for him, the Flames of Ra would literally burn anything which meant him harm to a crisp, but that wasn't so good for the wolves. In the darkness, their eyes shone golden-red, reflecting the firelight creating a veritable bonfire around him and giving him the eerie sensation of being watched by something supernatural.

Looking down at himself again, he realized there was no way he could go anywhere in his condition—it was all he could do to stay warm. As a cold wind blew, disrupting the flow of energy and fire around him, he knew it was true and he couldn't afford to waste the physical energy he would exert just by getting up and walking around. On the other hand, as long as Ra was willing to help him stay warm and safe, he would be a beacon for anyone out looking for him, enemy and ally. At the moment, his only enemies were the wolves, and the only _humans_ who would be looking for him would be his countrymen or the King, all of whom were allies. By that logic, it was safer for him to stay where he was, pray to Ra to guide Seto or his people to him, and wait for rescue.

Once he'd decided, the Prince shifted his position and pushed himself up to kneel on both knees, palms pressed together in a prayer position as he let his eyes close and began praying.

A&S

Seto was furious!

What he'd thought was legitimate, required work had turned out to be a waste of his time, and he'd gotten back to his chambers late at night, tired and irritated, hoping to lose himself in his lover's body. Instead, the room had been empty, and so had Atem's own. Given how late it was, he'd gone to look for the other teen, not understanding what had caused the Prince to go out so late. No one knew where he was, not even his own countrymen, but a servant had seen a rider leaving the grounds. A check of both the regular stables and the military stables had revealed a military horse missing, not the noble steed Atem had occasionally ridden, so he had discarded the information at first.

Now, he was beginning to regret doing so, even as he began feeling a chilling sensation and the urge to _go_, that he _had_ to go to the smaller teen. Atem was in trouble and instinctively calling him. Isis had told him something to that effect, anyway.

But, he had no way of finding out _where_ he had to go, because 'outside', to account for the chill, was much, much larger than 'inside'.

Suddenly, as he prowled the halls, trying to decide on his next move, a burst of fire appeared and flashed in front of him, forcing him to cover his eyes.

A voice said, "The Prince calls you to him. You must go. I can only warm and protect him for so long before I must return to the Realm of Shadows, and the wolves will be on him as soon as my flames fade."

Opening his eyes in surprise and blinking the spots from them, the King found himself looking at a man with bird wings, a bird's tail, talons on both front and hind feet, and a bird's—an eagle's—beaked head. Having a sudden epiphany, he asked, "Are you Ra?"

"Yes," the man replied.

"How can I find Atem when I have no idea where to look?" Seto asked suddenly with a frown.

"Priest Mahad can find anything which exists in this physical world to be found. In the absence of want to ask him for help, the same sensation which causes you to sense the danger to the Prince can also guide you to him. That is, so long as you _do not_ negate the very sensation which can lead you to the one you seek. You will need a Mage to warm him, at the very least," Ra explained. "Now, you must go." With those last words, the half-bird, half-human being vanished as a flame burst, then faded where he'd been standing.

Closing his eyes for a moment, the King quickly decided on his best course of action. If it was true and he could find Atem using that feeling, he had to get to a Mage quickly, and the Mage nearest at hand was Ryou. Bolting for the man's room, he was shocked to find the door opening as he got there, and Ryou stepped out, dressed for riding and with a large bundle of heavy blankets under one arm. Stopping to stare, he found himself at a loss for words.

Sighing, Ryou said, "I learned some of their fortune-telling techniques in Egypt, Your Majesty. Obviously, no one is as good as Priestess Isis, but the servants are all searching for the Prince as well, so I heard from them. Shortly after I had finished determining what I could, I felt Ra's aura here, and figured it would be time to go, so began preparing. Well, then, lead the way, Your Majesty."

"...Thank you," Seto said gratefully, then gave a nod and turned to lead the way to the stables. Not long after, the two of them were on their way, riding hard and fast as the King forced himself to choose his direction based on his first decision.

They were following a set of horse tracks, making him think again of the rider who had left the Palace earlier. It made him wonder why Atem had gone with someone, but he'd be able to ask once they reached him, so he just tried to follow where that feeling led him.

Suddenly, the tracks vanished, making him pull up short as he scanned the ground for more tracks. There weren't any.

"Your Majesty, is that a brush fire? Out in nearly barren land in the middle of winter?" Ryou asked suddenly, pointing up and off to one side.

Looking, the King suddenly found himself thinking back to Ra—and turned to head for the blaze as he called, "That's Atem!"

When they were near enough to see the form kneeling in prayer in the light, and to see the wolves pacing around the literal circle of light, the fire also began weakening, the flaming wings shrinking down. A few moments later, the wolves were launching themselves at the Prince, even as the flames vanished and the darker teen began falling to the ground.

"Mirror Force!" Ryou shouted, causing a brilliant light to flash around Atem as the wolves were propelled back, falling to the ground, dead.

"What in all the Hells was _that_?" Seto asked with a glare as he rode right over to his lover and reached down to lift him up.

"Egyptian magic," the white haired man replied. "Ask His Highness to explain later. In the meantime, he'll freeze if we don't bundle him up and return him to the Palace. Did you notice he's only wearing his nightclothes?"

The King snarled as they wrapped Atem up in cloth and magic and headed back.


	12. Chapter 12 - Broken

A/N: JUST IN CASE this site and others like it have to be taken down on the 19th of March due to a new copywrite law being put out (see ShatteredDragon's most recent post on their story 'Fire and Rain' for more details and links), I've decided to post the last remaining chapters of this story now, so I can't be hit by a copywrite infringement. Enjoy the last 3 chapters and the Epilogue! :D

Broken

When Atem finally woke, it was slowly. His eyes opened as he slowly began to remember what had happened—but the last thing he could remember was the fire fading as his energy and bond with Ra faded, making him suddenly come fully awake and frantic—

Until arms wrapped around him from behind and a familiar voice said, "It's all right, Atem. You're back in the Palace."

Turning over in the other's grip, the smaller teen found himself looking at a clearly worried Seto—and he suddenly felt like hugging the older teen as he burst into tears. For a long time, they just laid together in the bed, the Prince holding tightly onto his King as he released feelings he hadn't been able to before. The stress had clearly gotten to him, and he knew very well he had nearly died, along with his child. Speaking of which...

"Our child...Seto, our—" he began.

"Shh...You're both all right, don't worry. Ra apparently really wanted you both to survive, since he came to see me in the Palace when I was looking for you and told me _to_ act and how," the paler teen explained. "And as soon as Ryou and I got you back here, Kisara healed you of your injuries—somehow, you were still maintaining the womb, as though knowing she'd need to heal our child as well."

Releasing a deep breath, the Prince began relaxing, finally able to wrap his mind around the fact that he—and his unborn child—was safe. "You came for me..."

"Of course I did," the King replied dryly. "I just needed to know how to find you. Ra helped me with that." He paused, then asked, "What's 'Mirror Force'?"

To his surprise, the younger teen tensed, then asked warily, "Where did you hear that term?"

"Ryou used it to kill the wolves as you fainted," the taller teen replied. "Why?"

"...He can use it?" Atem asked in surprise.

"Yes, but he had to use so much energy to keep you warm on our way back here that he fainted as soon as he didn't have to maintain the casting anymore," Seto said. "I would have asked him if he'd been conscious."

With a little sigh, the darker teen nodded. "Only the highest-ranked Priests and the Royal Family are supposed to know that spell, and even my mother can use it, even though she just married into the family. It doesn't take a lot of energy, but the conditions for its use are purely defensive, and can sometimes be perfectly useless. Of course, under the right conditions, it can also strike down a whole army, or as many of the enemy are in range. Basically, Egyptian magic has a category which 'counters' another action, and Mirror Force falls under that category. Its terms are that, when the caster or an ally is attacked, it can be activated, and it repels the damage, not just onto the attacker, but all those it registers as 'attacking enemies'. It has two fatal flaws—it can't harm a defending enemy, and it only repels the actual damage which would have been done. If an attack would have just caused minor injury, that's all the enemy will get."

"Couldn't you just keep doing that as long as you were being attacked?" the King asked in puzzlement.

Shaking his head, the younger teen said, "It can't be used again for a full day after use, so if you use it, it _has_ to be as a last resort—you won't _get_ another chance."

"If the people who know how to use it are so limited, why can Ryou?"

"...Probably, he would have been made one of those highest-ranked Priests if he hadn't left. Maybe he even left so he didn't have to become one. They have to do very unpleasant things, sometimes."

Silence fell for a few minutes, then the older teen asked, "How did you get out there to _begin_ with?"

"I don't know!" the smaller cried. "I'd thought I went to bed in your bed, and I must have fallen asleep, but when I woke up, I was out there, wherever 'there' was!"

After a pause, Seto's eyes widened. "So...one of my nobles, or their servant, found you sleeping in my bed? That's going to be a problem and a half..."

Atem had to pause to think about that for a minute, and with a sinking feeling, he realized what the other teen meant. "Yeah...but on the other hand, it may make them think you've broken me or something, because I'm 'obeying' something like that."

"I wouldn't count on that, though..."

"...Neither would I."

"For now, there's nothing we can do, so let's enjoy our time together."

"...All right."

A&S

Surprisingly, nothing happened for quite some time after that. A quiet month later, the Wolf Winter broke and normal temperatures returned, giving everyone much more energy back. Even those who weren't used to the cold were mostly all right with the regular winter temperatures after the cold of a Wolf Winter. Halfway through the second month of cold, Atem began getting sick in the evening, alternate evenings, making Seto worry until both Chief Healers informed him it was normal for a woman with child to become ill around that point in time, but it would normally happen in the morning. After about three more weeks, that also stopped.

By then, he'd been with child for over three months, and was learning some things from the Healers he hadn't known before. The next two months were also calm, even as it became harder to hide the state of his body as the child grew to five months, and only the many, thick layers of clothing Atem had to wear to stay warm allowed him to hide it. Still, he knew it would be very soon when he'd have to start becoming fully male during the day again.

Or so he thought, until the middle of what every northerner was calling 'the last blizzard of the season', what would likely also be the last snowfall before things warmed to spring. Compared to most blizzards, it wasn't as heavy, and was actually holding heat at ground level instead of creating a piercing cold. That day, as he walked from Ryou's room to the Libraries, pausing to glance through a crack in a window where snow flakes came in from, he felt a sudden blow at the base of his skull—and dropped into darkness.

A&S

When he woke with a small groan and an aching head, he quickly realized he lay on a cold, hard surface and couldn't move his arms or legs. Once a bit more of his senses returned to him, he realized that was because his wrists were tied above his head and his ankles were tied securely to the cold surface—probably a stone floor—under him. At least he was still clothed enough to be fairly warm, and outside, he could hear the sound of the blizzard, so he hadn't been out for that long.

Opening his eyes, he looked around to see a plain, circular-shaped room, puzzling him at first, until he realized it was probably a tower room, since only the towers were such a shape. There was nothing in the room except some torches for light, but there were several people, most of whom looked like soldiers. In fact, of those he could see, only one of them wasn't dressed like a noble's personal guard, and that was the noble to whom they all belonged. Atem also knew said noble as one of the ones who most wanted to make him suffer, so he was under no illusions about what would happen.

The lord saw his eyes open and smirked as he said, "So the King apparently gets much private use of your body. For him to be so interested, it must be quite an attractive one. My benefit now is that you'll be quite prepared for when I take you. The rest, I doubt you'll enjoy, since I enjoy hearing others scream."

Vaguely, in the distance, a cacophony of noise rose, with no actual definable sound.

Atem pursed his lips as the man knelt at his hip and drew a dagger from his belt, but said nothing, starting to reach for the womb with his mind—but he wasn't fast enough as the man used the dagger to quickly slit the front of his clothes in one smooth motion. A pause followed as the lord blinked, then reached down to caress the small, rounded mound growing in the Prince's lower belly. The touch was much gentler than he'd been expecting, but to him, that was a bad thing, if what Seto said about them was true.

After a minute of gently exploring the mound, the lord said, "You didn't have this when you first came here, and if it was just fat, surely there would be other signs." Again, Atem didn't answer, so the man's lips turned up slightly and went on, "You always seemed a bit odd, but I never would have guessed you were female enough to become with child. No wonder His Majesty and the Chief Healer are so concerned over your health. However, this child is not a boon to us, so it—and you—must die."

"My people will go to war with you, openly, if you kill me now," the Prince glared.

With a smirk, he said, "Yes, they will. And we'll have every right to torture and kill as much as we like because of it, and be outside the King's view often enough to enjoy ourselves. You see, we have no qualms about killing an unborn child, spit-fire."

The words caused Atem's heart to leap into his throat, even as the man pulled back his fist and punched the mound as hard as he could. Unlike the torture when he was first captured, the pain of the blow shot through him, multiplied by the infant in his body. It was so intense he cried out in pain before he could stop himself, and looked up at the man in horror through squinted eyes as he lifted the knife to bring it down on his body, right where his child, _their_ child, was growing.

Knowing he couldn't let it hit, at the last moment, he threw his hips to the side, causing the knife to stab him alongside his hipbone rather than right where the child was. It still made him give a strangled cry of pain as he tried to control his breathing, but he knew he wouldn't be able to keep evading the dagger like that for long with the way seething hatred came off the lord.

Suddenly, the door was thrown open as Seto yelled, "Atem!" He then froze in the doorway as he saw the dagger in his lover's gut—and saw red. "How _dare_ you?" he growled as the guards shot forward to attack him, and he moved to meet them.

Looking back at Atem, the lord yanked the dagger free and used his free hand to grab the Prince's hip, digging his thumb into the wound as he did. Atem cried out in pain and tried to pull free, but he couldn't—he was in too much pain and being held more tightly than he would have thought possible.

"Atem!" Seto yelled again as he was forced back and to the side of the door—

And in that moment, his shields slipped and fell, letting Atem read his soul, a soul so deep, powerful, hurting, and loving that tears filled his eyes and spilled over. Yes, he had a side which _could_ torture others, and the Prince was well aware his King could do so, but it wasn't a route Seto would take if he had another choice. His suffering in the past had turned him away from repeating such horrors, but his soul had been closed off by force long ago. The one who had been lifting him from that solitary darkness was the one he chose as his lover—Prince Atem—and he would never let his new-found light go or be extinguished.

Now he knew what he was to Seto, now there was no doubt.

As the dagger came down on him again, he recited, "Magical Boxes!" A strange box appeared around him, forcing the lord back with a curse and yelp, and a second took form behind Seto. Both boxes had three segments, a sealed door for each, and strong power flowing around them. Finally, a moment later, both of them, one laying flat on the floor and the other standing up against the wall, popped open—and Atem sagged and fell to the floor behind Seto, safely out of harm's way.

Except for the wound in his belly, which he pressed his hand to as he slowly pushed himself to a sitting position. Looking up at a surprised Seto and at the many men who were staring at him in shock and fear, he gave a small, wry grin to his lover and a little nod. Seto returned it and spun to launch his attack on the guards again, even as Atem whispered, "United We Stand!"

Power flowed from him and from other nearby sources, all focussing on the young King, who yelped—and turned the flow of power to attacking and killing the guards.

In the middle of that, something struck the wall, crashing through it—and Atem yelped as he began falling when part of the floor tilted, then slid and fell.

"Atem!" Seto yelled, reaching for him.

As a dagger rose behind Seto, the Prince yelled, "Look out!"

With a quick twist, the King spun back to the attackers—but a moment later, even as he realized he was falling through air towards white ground which was far below, he heard a scream of pain from his lover.

"_...There's a chance I won't be there because I'll be dead."_

Tears ran down his cheeks.

"Your Highness!" a voice below him cried in shock, then he suddenly felt arms catch him around the back and knees, making him look up at a shadowy sorcerer. The being was a summoned spirit, Mahad's soul-form, which was floating in the air with him as it got a firm grip on the Prince's back and knees.

It then lowered them both to the ground, where Mahad seized him and the sound of more breaking rock and battle came to him. As soon as the older man saw the state he was in, the Priest held his hand over the wound, temporarily sealing it with transformation magic, then doing the same to the front of Atem's clothes. Once he'd done those things, he pulled the outer layer of his robes off and wrapped the Prince in it, holding the smaller male to him to warm him.

"We have to go. Where's the King? What happened to you?" Mahad asked urgently as he picked the teen up in both arms and dismissed his summoned spirit.

"A lord...attacked me," Atem said softly, voice deadened. "Seto protected me...but the wall broke...and..."

The man drew in a sharp breath, and soon after, they were heading for the gates. On the way, Captain Mai joined them, Mana at her side, and it turned out to be a good thing when they got to the gates to find themselves being attacked. Mai jumped right into battle with them—until Mana showed some of her strength.

"Darkworld Thorn!" she called from her place beside Mahad, holding one hand forward. Plants grew up under the men, thorny vines reaching out to seize and cut into them, preventing them from moving as the vines kept growing. Finally, large, rather flat buds formed on the tops of the vines, only for the buds to open like giant mouths and dive down on the trapped men. Very literally, in only a few minutes, the men had been eaten by those dark vines, leaving Mai staring in shock as they began retreating back into the ground.

"What was that?" Mai asked, turning to look at Mana with new respect.

"A plant from the Shadow Realm, where spirits are," the girl replied. "It's the spirit world's version of a Venus Fly Trap, which are plants that lure and eat bugs. The difference is that spirit world trap plants eat spirits, demons, deities, and humans, instead. I just called it to me here and gave it food."

With an impressed whistle, the woman indicated they should follow her, so they did, and soon reached a reasonably well-used road near an intersection. At the intersection, there were several people waiting, people who included Isis, Kisara, and Bhakura, the last of whom looked like he'd gotten an eye injury bad enough to need bandages, even with the healing of the two Chief Healers. As soon as the two women saw Mahad carrying Atem, they rushed over to his side, worry etched on their features.

"What happened, Mahad?" Isis asked worriedly.

Before anyone quite realized it, Atem had reached out to wrap his arms around her neck as he wept openly on her shoulder, and she barely had time to catch him so he didn't fall to the ground. Everyone, even Bhakura, turned to stare at him, but no one dared to stop him from letting out those feelings. The sound was so heart wrenching others were brought nearly to tears, but after a moment of confusion, Isis' eyes widened in sudden understanding as tears ran silently down her own cheeks.

The woman turned her eyes to Mahad as she asked, "King Seto?"

Looking away with a flinch, he shook his head and said quietly, "He...the last one to see him was His Highness, and that was as the tower crumbled and the Prince fell...I didn't see the young King in the debris, but...the only other option is that the attackers who went after His Highness weren't all dead yet."

Isis closed her eyes and asked, "So there's a chance, though very slim?"

"Yes, but...we can't really afford to go back and look, can we? It was hard enough to rescue this many," Mahad asked quietly.

Kisara gave a mournful sigh as she said, "Even I know better than to go back to a collapsing castle, even if that castle is my home, and people I care about are still there. Can I assume you already had some idea this might happen?"

Nodding, the other Healer said, "I have visions as well, and the vision I saw...the 'father' wasn't there, and the 'mother' was in our homeland."

"Sister!" Merik called as he ran up and hugged her quickly, then drew back to look down at the weeping Prince. "What ha—wait, your vision?" When she nodded, his eyes went wide, even as others joined them.

"What vision? Where's my brother? I thought he went to rescue Atem from one of his nobles—" Mokuba began, then saw the looks of sorrow on the two Healers' faces—and went pale. "No...No!" He also dissolved in tears and dropped down at the older Prince's side to hug him. Atem shifted to put an arm around the younger boy as well.

Others began trickling over to the group, and the last to arrive were Ryuuji and Ryou with Anzu and a small group of university students. Once they had determined no one else was going to come, they began preparing to move on as Isis and Kisara healed Atem, and once he had stopped crying and fallen asleep, Bhakura offered to carry him, given the current condition of his eye. After all, his aim and balance would be off by the fact that he couldn't see out of one eye, so it was better for everyone if he took over general care of the Prince so the others could fight freely.

When they stopped at an inn on their route south that evening, Atem woke and began slowly wandering around absently, as though looking for something with no clear idea what. Some time later, he ran into someone and looked up to see Ryou and Bhakura standing side-by-side—and for the first time, he realized how much alike they were in looks, almost like twins.

Ryou rested a hand on his shoulder gently and said, "You should be resting, Prince Atem. I know the loss is painful, but—"

"You _don't_ know...not even a _fraction_ of it..." Atem replied softly, tears in his eyes, hand going to his belly. "And I'm going to run out of energy without him supplying me..."

"What?" the Mage asked in confusion.

"He means he turned himself woman enough to become with child—with the King's child," Bhakura replied simply, making Ryou turn to stare at him. "I'm guessing Atem wants to maintain the transformation so the child can keep growing, but now, he can't take energy from the child's father."

In sudden understanding, Ryou nodded and took a pendant from his belt-pouch, slipping it around Atem's neck. "It won't replace the King or your loss, but this pendant has some of his energy in it, and its purpose is to make energy 'feel' like the energy it was made using. I made dozens of different ones—you, Kisara, Isis, Merik, the King, even the Pharaoh—but this one may be best for you to support your child with. At least that way, energy you take from others will still have the 'father's' feel to it as long as the energy is put into the pendant, first, then you absorb the energy from it. This way, _anyone_ can give you energy, but it'll have the stable energy your child is used to feeling."

Atem could feel it—Seto's energy was indeed coming from the pendant. As he watched, Ryou took it in his hand and filled it with energy—energy which quickly began to 'feel' like the King's as well. When the Prince drew some of that energy to maintain his mixed form, he found it felt just like he was used to feeling. Looking up, he nodded in gratitude, but he didn't get a chance to say anything right away.

"It's great if you do that, but Atem, didn't you say you couldn't read my brother, so you never really knew what he felt about you?" Mokuba's wounded voice came from just a bit behind Atem. "Seriously, you took a risk like having his child without knowing?"

Turning to look, the older Prince slowly knelt and hugged the younger, saying quietly, "When he tried to save me, right then, when he thought...he saw the lord holding a knife in my gut, so he thought our child had been harmed...and all his shields came down. I could reach him, I could read everything so clearly. I no longer have any doubt of what he felt for me, for either of us, because right then, he couldn't have hidden the truth from me if he'd _tried_. I just wish he hadn't...just moments after I finally knew..."

Mokuba stared in shock and just let Atem cry softly on his shoulder while the Mage and spy watched quietly.

A&S

The next morning, their month-long journey to Egypt began, and within the first week, they'd found a covered cart the two Princes could ride in to avoid prying eyes.


	13. Chapter 13 - Birth

Birth

Even with the Princes riding in the covered cart, the party drew plenty of attention, given how so many pale-skinned people were in it. As they walked down the main street leading to the Palace Gates, a man rode up to them, looking worried as he asked, "What happened?" It was Shada.

"The nobles in the north destroyed their own castle. There's no longer a nation there, and these are the survivors of the incident," Mahad replied tiredly. "Did you know about the Prince's—er—_condition_?"

"Yes," Shada nodded. "It should be fairly prominent while he's..."

"Which he always is," the other Priest informed him. "The Pharaoh will have a heart attack, but I have no idea how to ease this."

"What about the young King?" the bald man asked quietly. When Mahad just shook his head sadly, the Priest pressed his lips together in a fine line, then nodded. "Refugees, then?"

"For the Nihons, yes. Should we introduce His Highness before or after?"

"...Before. It should smooth the process with the others, since he'll be distracted by his son's state, and it would put him on the spot so he may be less likely to react with too much anger or violence."

"Very well. Please return ahead of us so we can be sure the Pharaoh will have time to see us when we arrive," Mahad requested.

"I will. Come at your leisure," Shada replied, then turned and rode back to the Palace.

By the time they got to the front doors of the Palace, it almost seemed like the building itself was holding its breath in anticipation, and some servants came to stand in the shade of the pillars by the front doors to watch the party. They were shocked by the pale boy who stepped from the cart, and even more shocked by the 'hooded woman' who was with child he helped down from it. They all proceeded inside as the servants spread word about what they'd just seen, and rumors were flying within moments.

In the Throne Room, the Pharaoh and the Priests, along with several nobles, watched as the group entered, and the man on the Throne immediately frowned as he asked, "I thought Atem was here with you?"

"He is," one of the Priests at the Pharaoh's side said dryly, his eyes on the figure everyone took as a woman who was with child, given the material covering 'her' features. The Priest who had spoken was a young man with bronzy skin and who wore the icons of the High Priest. "Exactly how did he come to be maintaining a state of transformation which apparently includes being with child, however? Your Highness, I feel we need an explanation, don't you?"

After a momentary, shocked silence, the hooded figure reached up to push the hood off, and the pale boy beside Atem took it and folded it up. The Prince, now just over six months with child and with deep, sad eyes, looked up at his father and said, "I unintentionally found a lover there. It was a choice I made to bear his child, even knowing Priestess Isis' vision that he would not be present at our child's birth. And...he isn't here now because he gave his life trying to save mine..._ours_. That's why I'm with child."

Even most of the Nihons were shocked by the revelation, all but the woman standing beside Isis, the man who looked like Bhakura, and the pale boy beside Atem, but the Egyptians were showing more anger and surprise than shock. Even Akhenaten, or especially Akhenaten, was extremely angry, especially since he realized the Prince had to've already been with child when he left.

"You hid this 'condition' from me?" he asked furiously.

"You would have forced me to be rid of my child, Uncle," Atem replied flatly. "This isn't something up for debate. I _will_ have this child, with or without your consent, and I have the support of Priestess Isis and the Chief Healer of Nihon to do so. More, even _Ra_ appeared to the child's father to help him save me. When the Priestess had her vision, she saw me here, giving birth to a healthy baby, and Father, you know as well as _I_ do that she can only see an event to its conclusion if it _must_ happen _exactly_ that way. Would you defy the will of the Gods after hearing all of that?"

"Brother!" a new voice cried from behind the travelers as the rest of the nobles and Priests stood still and stared in shock. As Atem turned to face the voice, a smaller boy who looked like him, but with gentler features and pure amethyst eyes, reached him and hugged him tightly. The boy then looked down at the now fairly prominent bulge of his brother's belly—and snickered as he looked up at the older teen. "So this is what the Goddess Isis meant when I prayed two days ago." His hand gently rested on the mound as he added, "I can't wait to see the baby!"

"Who are you?" Mokuba asked suspiciously of the other boy.

Yuugi looked over at him curiously as he said, "Prince Yuugi, but I don't mind just being called 'Yuugi'. You?"

"How dare you talk like that to a member of the royal family," one of the nobles glared at the pale boy.

Atem sighed and said, "Whether you like it or not, Mokuba stays with me—his older brother was my lover. I won't cast him aside now. Also, he and Yuugi will get along well, and they'll both have a proper playmate that way."

"How can you call some guard's brother a proper—" another of the nobles began with a sneer.

"If you put your foot any further in your mouth, you'll choke, My Lord," Atem cut him off acidly. Silence fell as he crossed his arms. "Yes, Mokuba is a 'proper playmate' in every sense of the word, because his brother, my lover, was King Seto."

A long, stunned silence fell, but after a moment, the High Priest stepped down to Atem and gently rested his hand on the other teen's belly, using his power to scan them both. He then withdrew his hand and met Isis' eyes for a minute. Done with whatever 'conversation' he'd been having with her, he turned back to face the Pharaoh and said, "If you still have issue with us inheriting Nihon by the very relationship the King and His Highness shared, you know very well the Priests can open the channel for you to speak with the Gods themselves. I, however, feel it would be best to simply accept this as it is and move forward with the knowledge that there is already potentially an Heir to the Throne after the Princes."

"You support such foolishness?" Akhenaten asked with a glare.

"Foolishness?" the High Priest asked coldly. "This is not 'foolishness', not by any stretch of the imagination. This is a _gift_, since it put one of our strongest errant Mages back in our hands and gave us access to several others who are clearly skilled in their fields. It also takes care of the younger Prince's perpetual boredom and _enforces_ proper, responsible action on the elder Prince—caring for a child will make him fairly incapable of running off and being captured again. Though, he may just take his child with him, but then he would have no way to support or feed it, so that would be a foolish, irresponsible action on his part, and I suspect he knows it. There are a good many reasons why this is _not_ 'foolishness'."

"And how do we know the elder Prince would indeed choose to be responsible?" one of the nobles glared.

"It would be odd for His Highness to have been so considerate of his child to date, just to stop now," Isis put in. "Men know nothing of what it takes to bear a child. Even when the Chief Healer, Kisara, chose to enlighten the Prince, he was still willing to do so, and he was very much concerned about anything which may cause harm to his unborn child. We _tried_ to deter him, _believe_ me, but he refused to be deterred. As such, I had to simply accept he was going to do this with as much or more care than a born-and-raised woman. And you know your son is not the type to stop something when it remains incomplete, My Pharaoh."

Finally, the man on the Throne heaved a sigh and gave a wryly amused smile as he rose and stepped down to his son, reaching out to draw him into a hug. When he released the younger male a minute later, he said, "This wouldn't be the first time children have come into the royal family through such unusual means, and regardless of the time it will take for me to adapt to this, I _am_ glad to have you back, Atem."

He then stepped back from his son and looked at Ryou as he said dryly, "I'm rather surprised you found your way back here after the state of affairs you left in, and that you can apparently stand peacefully beside your brother." Ryou made a face, so the older man laughed and said, "For now, I'll leave you and Shada in charge of the northerners, other than the Chief Healer, who can fall under Isis' care for now, and Prince Mokuba, who can fall under Yuugi and Atem's." His eyes then went to Atem again as he said, "Before you do anything else, however, you should go see your mother."

With a quick nod, Atem headed for the royal door into the Throne Room, which was behind the Throne. Not long after, he was standing outside his parents' adjoined rooms, the place his mother was most likely to be at that time of day, and suddenly felt nervous. He then winced as he felt his child kick him, and gave a wryly amused grin as he muttered, "Yeah, I know, 'get a move on', you brat. Any time I hesitate, you kick me. You're worse than your father." It almost felt like there was a laugh from the child.

He then sighed and knocked on the door. "Enter!" his mother's familiar voice called.

Opening it, he stepped quietly into the room, saying, "I'm home, Mother."

A stunned silence followed, then a glad, relieved cry of, "Atem, thank all the Gods!" In the next moment, he was being hugged tightly, and after another moment, she drew back to look at him, her fingers tracing the lines at his eyes and her other hand reaching down to rest on his belly. "What happened?"

"We should sit," the young man replied quietly, so they moved into the room.

With a deep sigh, he began explaining, even as they made themselves comfortable. He hadn't wept since the day the castle had been destroyed, but finally, while his mother held him, he wept again. She listened quietly, let him say everything he needed to say and get the feelings off his chest he desperately needed to.

When he finally calmed down, she said, "Atem, even if it's a slim chance, there's still a chance your lover is alive, so please, let yourself believe you'll see him again one day. If you become too depressed over a loss which may only be temporary, you may hurt yourself or your child, or even make an irreversible mistake."

"...An irreversible mistake?" Atem asked tentatively.

"I can't believe the Gods have turned away from him now, not if they intended you and him to be so close to begin with. If you believe he is dead when you don't know for certain, you may begin another relationship too soon, and what would you do then, if he happened to return?"

"...Then...Is there some way I can know more?"

"My son, is that really a question you need to ask as the Crown Prince?" she asked him dryly.

Releasing a deep breath, he gave a small, honest smile and murmured, "Thank you, Mother. Regardless, I think I wouldn't look for another partner until this child is taking lessons during the day, so it would be at least five years yet, if not longer. At some point during that time, I suppose I can try to find out something more concrete, and in the meantime...I can hope."

"Good. Go rest, since you must be exhausted," the woman told him in mild amusement.

He pushed himself up slowly and nodded, heading for his room, where he fell asleep right away.

A&S

Two and a half months passed as Atem mostly stayed inside and kept his partially female form. He was avoiding a lot of people, but for some reason, he was especially avoiding the High Priest, and there was no way he could actually escape from anyone with the extra size and weight of the child. Since the first day he'd returned to the Palace, he'd been avoiding the High Priest like the plague, and had spent most of his time with people who would donate energy to him so he could maintain his transformed state—Isis, Kisara, Mahad, Mana, Shada, and Ryou. By his own logic, he should have been allowing the High Priest to donate energy to him as well, but he somehow just didn't want the other young man near him.

Only, that day, when he woke from a mid-afternoon nap, Atem felt a gentle hand on his belly—and opened his eyes to see the very person he didn't want to. Right then, he realized why it bothered him, as well—while the High Priest had one inch less in height, darker skin, and longer hair, he and the King looked very much alike, _too_ much alike. They even had similar names, as High Priest Set and King Seto.

"Why are you here? I haven't called for you," the Prince glared.

"Of course not, and that's exactly the problem, Your Highness," Set replied dryly, not moving from where he sat beside the smaller's hip. "I have more than enough power to help you maintain your transformation, _without_ taking away from my other skills, I even _supported_ you to do this, and you won't even let me _help_ you? If I hadn't been informed by Kisara that I look very much like your lover, I would be insulted."

After a startled silence, Atem gently pushed Set's hand off his belly and carefully sat, then rose and walked slowly to the balcony, the High Priest following him quietly. There, in the shade of late afternoon being cast by the balcony roof, the Prince sighed and rested his elbows on the stone rail. Set was keeping a respectable distance, not too close and not too far, just waiting for a reply to the concerns he'd voiced.

"...You _do_ look very much like him..." he admitted quietly to the older teen. "Even your _personalities_ are somewhat similar, though you're a gentler sort of person overall. I'm afraid that my own emotional state will cause my feelings to move to a person and place they don't belong. That's why I keep avoiding you."

"Why are you worried about something foolish like that?" Set asked in amusement.

Slowly, the Prince faced him, asking, "What?"

"Are you ready to let go of him?"

"...No."

"Then I find it hard to believe you could convince yourself to move those feelings to me, particularly since you never had any such feelings for me before you were kidnapped," the High Priest replied pointedly. "Prince Atem, surely you know it, too—if you never had any feeling of love for me, or even of lust, it would be next to impossible to convince yourself I'm a person you feel that way about. Also, I would turn you down, as I've been courting Kisara of late—like you have no such feelings for me, I have none for you, either. As such, as your friend, as the High Priest, and as your servant, I want to help you with the task you've chosen to take on."

The words made Atem smile wryly, only to feel an especially hard kick from his child. "Ow..._Now_ what are you doing?" he asked his belly as he held his hand to the spot which now ached.

Set watched in mild amusement, then, even as Atem felt a good deal of wetness running down his legs, the High Priest's eyes went wide. "Your Highness, you'd better sit and brace yourself."

"Brace myself? For what? What just happened?" the Prince asked in pure, dazed confusion as he stared down at the puddle around his feet.

Before the other man could reply, he felt it—his muscles suddenly twisting, clenching, and exploding with pain. With a groan, he dropped to his knees, and would have fallen further if Set hadn't caught him, and immediately wrapped his arms around his belly as he doubled over around it. The pain lasted for over a minute, even as he vaguely heard the High Priest say, "Kaiser Sea Horse, go to Isis and Kisara and tell them it's time!"

"Time? For what?" he gritted out through the pain, even as he felt it start easing off.

"Your Highness, that water came from your water breaking—your baby has decided to join us in this world now," the High Priest explained as he helped Atem sit straight.

"So...the pain was a birthing pain?" the Prince asked quietly as Set grabbed a blanket from the bed and wrapped it around the smaller teen before picking him up in both arms and carrying him from the room.

"Yes. Let me give you energy and help maintain your transformed state, or in your pain, you may not be able to do so alone," Set told him tersely.

Giving his head a shake, the younger replied, "I agree I may need to borrow some of your energy, but I _will_ bear this child myself, right to the end. By the way, I can walk now, so you can put me down."

"That was the same thing your mother said when _you_ were born," his Uncle's dry voice commented from a short ways away. "Once the work your father is doing is finished, which should be in a few candle marks, he'll join the rest of us outside the Birthing Chamber."

"...How long are you expecting this to take, exactly?" Atem asked in puzzlement.

"This is your first, so easily until morning. You took nearly a full day to come into this world, but your brother's path, eased as it was by you, took only from the evening meal until midnight of the same day. Didn't the Healers inform you of the time the birth itself would take?" Akhenaten asked in mild amusement.

Making a face at the older man, the Prince replied, "They hinted it would take awhile, but never gave examples..."

"If you're going to, you should take energy now, Your Highness. We're almost there," the High Priest told him.

Giving his head a shake, Atem replied, "If I do so while you're carrying me, you'll drop me, High Priest. You'd better be sitting, first."

"We have the room prepared," Isis said as they approached the door to the Birthing Chamber. "Has his water broken?"

"Yes, at nearly the same time as the first pain," Set told her, even as she motioned him into the room.

"Place him on the bed, then remove yourself from the room, High Priest. The only one allowed to enter from this point on is Her Majesty."

"I'll see to it," the High Priest agreed as he moved over to the bed and placed Atem gently on it.

"No, you won't, if I'm going to use your energy to do this," the Prince told him dryly. "Anyway, 'men' know not to enter."

Set made a face and stepped outside—even as Atem's mother stepped into the room. The door closed as another pain struck the Prince, making him bite his lip against it, but he still had to groan and squeeze his eyes shut. After the burst of pain had eased and women bustled around the room to prepare for the birth, Atem knew he would indeed need all the energy the High Priest had offered him, so he reached out for it—and pulled. Hard. He also pulled as much as he could, because he knew he'd need it all just by how much energy the pain drained from him.

From that point on, cycles of pain and easing began, at first with the easing time being longer than the pain time, but as the cycle went on, the easing got to be shorter and shorter. He began falling asleep between bursts of pain, but finally, there wasn't enough time between for him to do so. At that point, he found himself pulling energy from Set again, pulling as much as he could and hoping it would carry him through the birth. He certainly had a new respect for women, just from the birthing process itself, let alone the months leading up to it.

Finally, as dawn broke the next morning, he was able to push in the proper way to allow the child to leave his body, and after three pushes, it was free of him. For a moment, there was silence, even as the Prince almost fell into sleep from relief—until there was a slapping sound, then the sound of a howling infant. Opening his eyes, he sought the source of the sound, prompting his mother and two of the servants to shift and prop him up on the pillows so he was half-sitting.

After a minute, a crying baby wrapped in a cloth was offered to him as Isis said with a small smile, "Congratulations, Your Highness. You've given birth to a boy."

He took the bundle automatically, having been taught how to hold it by the Healers, and looked down at it as its crying calmed and it drifted into sleep. Atem had to close his eyes for a minute, then opened them again, trying to think of a name through his exhaustion. Before, when he and Seto had discussed potential names, they'd had a great conflict between the names of the northern land and the southern land, so while the Prince could now choose any name he wished—he wasn't sure he wanted to just callously choose one of his own.

Without meaning to, he fell asleep, and only woke a few hours later when Kisara gave the baby to him so he could feed him. As soon as it latched—painfully—onto Atem's breast, he felt like he'd had an epiphany, a name very similar between them.

"Kai," he said, making the women look at him in surprise. "His name is Kai*."

A&S

A/N: *He uses the 'Nihon' spelling of the name; the Egyptian spelling would be Khai.


	14. Chapter 14 - Surprise

Surprise

Atem had a headache.

Really, had he been _this_ bad? At _three_?

His son, Kai, had managed to sneak out of the Palace in a basket of laundry, had spent two hours running around the city, and was now running through the desert in the heat of midday in nothing but his loincloth. The Crown Prince had been chasing him for the whole time, ignoring how the townspeople were laughing at the escapade—they rarely got entertainment as good as a grown noble chasing their own child through the city streets, after all. Or rather, until Kai had started walking, they hadn't.

The strange thing was that he was _sure_ he'd been watching Kai closely, and a moment later, he'd been gone. Only, the moment, as it had turned out, hadn't been 'a moment', but half a candle mark. The only explanation he could think of was that the boy was quite a powerful Mage, one with High Priest Set's power to manipulate other's minds, to take control of their bodies at will—only Kai's power was entirely natural, not granted by one of the Millennium Items.

At least the brat was heading in the direction of an oasis, assuming he kept going in that same direction, and there was no guarantee of that.

He had _such_ a headache...

Suddenly, rather than 'running down' the slope of the next dune, it looked more like Kai 'fell'—and a moment later, he heard yelps.

"Oh, great..." the Crown Prince sighed, picking up his pace.

When he reached the top of the slope and could see down the other side, he realized this was a dune which had built into a cresting wave shape, hence how Kai had fallen without warning, and that he'd landed on a man below while a woman stood beside the two as she giggled. The man was sprawled flat on the sandy ground with Kai sitting on his waist and staring in shock, and it looked like both were foreign travelers from north of the Inland Sea. Then, he looked again, realizing the woman looked familiar—she looked like the servant Shizuka from Nihon!

Slowly, his eyes went back to the man—and his heart stopped for a moment.

"Seto!" he cried, jumping down to land on the man—and trapping Kai between them. The younger boy yelped as the man groaned, then, even as he wept, hands took his face and turned it up.

When his scarlet-amethyst eyes met sapphire blue, there was no thought, just tears and deep kissing for some time, even as Kai managed to wiggle out from between them. Atem assumed Shizuka caught him, since his energy stayed close by this time, so he just relaxed and turned all his attention to the man he hadn't seen in nearly four years. Seto apparently felt the same way, as he reacted equally fervently.

Finally, they broke the kiss and Seto said, "I'm so glad we made it here...But what are you doing outside the Palace?"

At that, the Crown Prince chuckled and pointed in the direction of Kai's energy as he said, "I was chasing that little brat. I daresay it's a bad idea for us to have kids if we want peace and quiet, since our combined blood is anything _but_ 'peace and quiet'."

Blinking in surprise, then looking over at the little boy, Seto began to peace together the story—the child's almost 'pale' indigo eyes, deep brown, flyaway hair, and softly creamy skin. There were shocks of blond and red in the boy's hair, much like Atem had, and it was clear he was the slender sort, but how tall he would grow was another story. It was a nearly perfect blending of the two parents, and the result was a child nearly as abnormally attractive as the 'mother'.

"That's...our son?" Seto asked quietly, looking back at Atem.

With a nod, the younger of the pair said, "I named him Kai. I chose it because it was a name which was very similar to both our peoples." His eyes then went to Kai as he said, "Come over here and meet your father properly, Kai." Sure enough, Shizuka had managed to catch him and hold him by the hand, but when he took a step in Atem's direction, she let go of the boy's hand.

"You're okay with introducing me as his 'father' when you're a man, too?" Seto asked in mild amusement as Kai took another step in their direction.

As the boy turned to bolt, Atem growled, "Not this time, brat. Lightning Paralysis!"

In the next moment, a lighting bolt came down out of the sky—and Kai yelped as it hit him and he found he couldn't move.

"...Um—" Seto began with a rather stunned, horrified look on his face.

"That's the only way to keep him behaved. I've been chasing him for over two candle marks already, and this is how far he managed to get," Atem replied dryly. "The spell doesn't cause any degree of pain, it just makes it impossible to move for about a candle mark. With Kai, _trust me_, it's _needed_. As soon as he could walk, even without the ability to transform, he's been getting out of the Palace and making me chase him around the city and desert. And I have a headache right now, anyway. Are you happy with the results of your son, Seto?"

"Er...Well...he's rather attractive, isn't he?" the other man asked as he thought about the words.

"Good. From now on, _you_ can chase him, then," Atem replied. At those words, Seto flinched and Shizuka sighed sadly, making the Prince look between them and ask, "What? What's wrong?"

"Your Highness...when the castle collapsed, part of it...crushed His Majesty's leg...If Ra hadn't appeared and shielded him from the worst, he wouldn't have survived, but the only Healers I could find also weren't fully trained...They did as much as they could, which was enough to allow him to walk with a cane, but...he could never chase a child with his injury..." Shizuka explained quietly.

The smaller man's eyes widened as he reached out to take the other man's face in his hands, to make Seto meet his eyes. "Is that true, Seto?"

"Yes," the older man admitted, voice pained and eyes wounded.

Atem reached out to hug him again, crying into his shoulder as he realized how hard the last four years would have been for the other man.

Seto also wrapped his arms around Atem, holding him tightly as he asked, "You won't leave me?"

"Never," the Prince replied through his tears. "Never. When you came to the tower room, when you saw the dagger...all your shields came down and I could read your soul. I won't lose you, not over something so petty."

After a moment, the older man said softly, "Part of me was afraid to come now that I'm only a burden...I was so afraid of being turned away. It was Shizuka who convinced me to come anyway, convinced me to try at least once before giving up...Now, I'm glad she did. Thank you so much, Atem." The younger man just nodded into his shoulder.

For a long time, they just stayed like that. Even when the power released Kai, he just moved into the shade and began playing in the sand, making something like little towers. Shizuka sat down with him to play with him while they waited for the men to finish whatever emotional bonding they needed.

Finally, Kai got tired of waiting and complained, "Mother, I'm bored!"

Atem burst out laughing as Shizuka giggled and Seto asked incredulously, "He calls you 'Mother', even though you're a man?"

Looking up, the smaller teen said, "He knows very well that he came from inside my body, so I'm his 'mother'. I never intended to hide that from him, so he's been told from the time he was born, about transformation and about how I used it to have him with his 'father'—you. It's just, you're still a stranger to him, so he might not actually treat you like a father until he gets used to you."

After a moment, Atem rose and offered a hand to his lover, who took it and let him pull him up. He retrieved his fallen cane, then they began walking back to the Palace, going in through an entrance leading straight into the Palace grounds, not the city. It didn't take long after that for total chaos to erupt as people figured out who had arrived in the Palace. Kai was surprisingly well-behaved for once, and Atem was grateful to him, given all the other chaos he had to deal with.

In the process of the introductions and re-introductions, while he was sitting in the dining hall and staring absently off into space, Seto realized Yuugi and Mokuba, both four years older than they had been, were sitting on a window ledge behind a curtain. As he watched them, visible as they were only to him, he realized how they were touching each other and realized they had become more than 'playmates', unless the one speaking meant 'sexual playmates'. His heart almost stopped as he stared.

"What's wrong?" Atem asked as he sat beside the taller man. Seto just nodded at Yuugi and Mokuba, so the Prince looked, then gave a wry grin and said, "Yes, they rather enjoy 'playing', though compared to us, they're mild."

"They're not supposed to be—" the older man began, voice tense.

He was cut off by a sigh as the smaller man said, "Seto, stop it. You're being too protective when _I've_ already accepted it, and it's _my_ brother who winds up in the woman's position most of the time." He paused, then added dryly, "And anyway, what did you expect, given what they have as examples from us, their older brothers?"

For a long time, the former King was silent, then he sighed and relented, "I guess you have a point."

Isis and Kisara also took the man aside to see what they could do about his leg, and they were able to do a little more than the previous Healers had been able to, but there was no way to completely fix it. "It's beyond our skills to repair such sever damage which has already healed the wrong way—even a fresh wound would have been difficult to repair fully with the extent of the damage," Isis told him with a sigh.

"In other words, I'm going to be a burden for the rest of my life, and I shouldn't have come..." the former King sighed as he slumped.

Suddenly, Kisara slapped him, quite openly and fearlessly, and said, "Even assuming you can't fight any longer, your mind still works just fine, and your skills as a commander and tactician certainly would not have deteriorated. Rather than thinking about all the things you 'can't do', start thinking about what you 'can do', since there are still things you can do for those you care about and for those of your people who made it this far, like your brother and myself."

After a silence, he realized how much the current conversation sounded like his conversation with the newly-captured Crown Prince, and he began laughing as he said, "Thank you for both the physical and verbal slap. Now I know how Atem was able to be so easily depressed by his situation when he'd just been captured, so thank you."

Finally, they let him go, and—to his surprise—Mai guided him to Atem's room, where he saw the Crown Prince sitting on the cushions beside a soundly sleeping Kai, even as he gently brushed his hand over the boy's hair. When the younger man looked up and saw him, he jumped up and ran to hug him.

"What did the Healers say?" Atem asked, keeping his voice low so he didn't disturb the three-year-old's sleep.

"Well, I can walk without a cane...but the operative word is 'walk'. I'm limited in how fast I can go, and for how long, but this way, it's better than it previously was," Seto explained, holding one hand to the back of the Prince's head as he wove his fingers through his hair. As such, he felt a nod, rather than seeing it.

"At least you have that much...I should never have left..."

"You _had_ to go. Besides, you probably would have died from what was left of the winter if you didn't go, since it turned out to be a _long_, cold winter. Spring came late, and the crops nearly entirely failed—the north fell into civil disarray to such an extent that everyone was just killing everyone else, regardless of class or profession. I never would have wanted you to live through that, let alone our son."

Silence fell for some time before Atem drew back to look at him, saying, "I'm so glad you lived to reach here. My only real regret was that you weren't able to be there for Kai's birth." He then chuckled and added, "What's most amusing is how Uncle Akhenaten dotes on him, even though he was the one most opposed to me having him."

With a chuckle, Seto said, "Now _that_ I have to see—your old stick of an Uncle actually _doting_ on my son? He must be having a crisis in himself. Er...but if Kai shares your...or is it 'our' room? Anyway, if he shares it, where would we have time to enjoy ourselves privately?"

"We can have two separate rooms or share one. Until Kai starts his classes in about two years, he'll share my room, since I'm his 'mother', and the more operable question would be 'when' we enjoy ourselves. Basically, while he's with my mother or his nanny, we can take time to enjoy ourselves—but not tonight. I'm much too tired after the chaos today," the Prince explained.

"It's fine," Seto agreed. "I was thinking I was too tired tonight, as well. I just wanted to know what kinds of plans we'd have to make, since I can't just assume we'll be spending every night passionately any longer."

"No, not until Kai has his own room," Atem agreed wryly.

He then led his lover to his bed, and they made themselves comfortable as they held each other for the first time in nearly four years.

A&S

The next day, Atem was just returning to his room after passing Kai on to his mother for the afternoon, when he felt arms wrap around him from behind. He'd just stepped into his own room, and the door had closed without him pushing it shut, himself, so he realized he'd have very little time to convince Seto he wanted to rest. As he opened his mouth—an all-too-familiar hand gripped his member, and he forgot all his arguments of exhaustion. It had been too long since he'd been with _anyone_, let alone his lover, and his body immediately reacted with desire.

A blindfold settled over his eyes, and he shut them obediently, already knowing fairly well the direction things were going to go, even as Seto's familiar voice told him, "You have quite a collection of _toys_ in here. How did you explain them to Kai? Or did you somehow keep them away from him?"

"No...He thinks they're just normal toys and plays with them that way," Atem answered in amusement as calloused hands undressed him. "I was trying to make sure everything I had enjoyed so much with you was here, just in case I ever had someone here to use them—ideally you, but maybe someone else _many_ years down the road."

"Oh, _that_ was quite a comment, wasn't it?" the older man asked in amusement. "I guess I should punish you for it."

"Don't say it like a question, Love. It isn't _nearly_ threatening enough," the smaller of the two replied in amusement.

With a chuckle, Seto very quickly began playing very thoroughly with his lover—he had four years to make up for, after all.

A&S

Late that evening, Seto walked out to the balcony overlooking the Palace gardens, leaning his arms on the rail as he mused over how different it was from Nihon. Atem was still sleeping off their time together, and Kai...was he really still with his grandmother so late? He'd been rather careless, since he'd been expecting the boy to be back in their care by the evening meal, only...they had missed the meal, apparently.

"King Seto, is it?" a voice asked him, making him jump in surprise and turn to look—at Atem's father, Pharaoh Ahknemkhanen.

"Not 'King' anymore, unfortunately," Seto replied with a sigh, turning back to the view. "And I doubt you came out here to exchange pleasantries with me, Pharaoh."

A chuckle made him look over at the larger, darker man again as said man also moved over to the rail and leaned his arms on it to look out over the gardens. "Well, I can't say if wanting to know about you counts as 'pleasantries' or not, but if your son is going to be Atem's replacement, I should know his...'father'. That you survived and made it all the way here in your condition is a boon to me, believe it or not."

Pausing, Seto considered the words for a minute, he asked, "Why does everyone just seem to call me Kai's 'father' when Atem is a man, too?"

"Didn't my son tell you? Kai came from his body, so male or not, he still takes the role of the 'mother' and you take the role of the 'father'. Since this isn't the first time this has happened, though not normally with a former enemy, we simply adapted to it," the older man informed the younger.

"...Were you told the extent of the damage concerning my 'condition'?"

"Yes, Isis informed me."

"...Is that really...I mean, if I can't move around properly, I'm a burden to—"

"King Seto."

The younger man stopped talking for a moment, then sighed and said, "I hope you won't repeat Kisara's scolding yesterday."

"No, of course not," the older man agreed in amusement. "But I have no use for self-pity, and I suspect, neither do _you_. I recall you being quite a hand with a sword, given some of the sparring matches my people saw you fight, and which they relayed to me. If your skills are truly so great, you should be able to adapt them to a style which requires very little movement from the place where you stand. Rather than self-pity, it would most likely suit you better to use your time working out something useful, yes?"

After a silence, the younger man chuckled and admitted, "Yes, that would be a much more effective way to use my time. Thank you."

"Good," the Pharaoh said, then paused for a moment. "The strength it would have taken for you to survive for four years and make a journey like this under those conditions is worthy of respect. I can accept you as my son as much as Atem, Yuugi, and Mokuba, so it would be in your own best interests to stay at Atem and Kai's sides." After saying those words, the man turned and left, nodding at the High Priest as he went.

Said High Priest took a few steps towards the paler man as he commented, "Kisara was right, we look eerily alike."

Blinking in surprise, Seto asked, "So I noticed, but why does that matter?"

"When Kai was born...Atem used my energy to keep him in the form he needed to give birth. Apparently, it irritated Kai, but I passed out—twice—during the process. Did you ever pass out from him taking your energy?" Set asked, his brow raised a little.

Shaking his head, Seto replied, "I got weak and shaky for a few minutes when he did a sudden, large draw, but other than those few minutes, I felt fine. The rest of the time, he was just constantly siphoning off a smaller quantity of energy, and I never even noticed that. For the birth, I have no idea what would have happened, since I have no idea if he would have been drawing the same amount or more energy."

That time, it was Set's turn to blink in surprise, then he gave a wry grin and said, "I want to know how extensive your energy is, so once Kai starts his lessons in about two years, you may want to convince Atem to bear another child—the action suits him oddly well. That is, it won't hurt him to produce another, and it would let you know what the birth is like for him. Well, as long as you don't produce another child like Kai."

"In what way?" the paler man asked in surprise.

"Did Prince Atem tell you about how often Kai manages to get out of the Palace?" the darker of the two asked in mild amusement.

"...He implied it was fairly regularly."

"Ah. Well, let me clarify that, then. Since your arrival, he's been behaved and stayed in the Palace, so a day and a half. He's never been so well-behaved before, and the Prince easily spends a third of his day _every day_ chasing him through the city or the desert, or, more often, both. The boy never seems to stop or run out of energy, the sun and heat apparently have no effect on him, and he only takes enough time to drink any liquids when he stops to eat his meals. More often, he grabs things like grapes and pomegranates off the farmer's stands in the city or off wild plants and eats them on the run to get his liquids. The entertainment value of the chase is really both their only saving grace. _That's_ what he's been dealing with since Kai was only about a year old."

At first, Seto was shocked and horrified by the reality of the situation, but he then instinctively began finding ways around the situation—and came up with, "If he has so much energy and apparently likes running so much, let him carry messages for people and make the whole city his babysitters in the process."

After a surprised blink, the High Priest asked, "At three?"

"Well, 'running' seems to be his way of 'playing', and as far as I can tell, the whole city is what he considers his 'playground', so it isn't actually making him 'work' to give him a destination, is it?" the former King asked in mild amusement.

With a little chuckle, Set commented, "I guess you have a point. I'll see if the soldiers and others in town would mind it, then, and you convince the Prince to do it."

"That shouldn't be hard if it means we both get time together because Kai is otherwise occupied," Seto replied in amusement, and the other man laughed.


	15. Chapter 15 - Epilogue

Epilogue

Many years had passed since Seto had arrived at the Palace. Atem, who had recently been made Pharaoh after his father's death, walked through the halls towards the training grounds. Mahad saw him on his trek and joined him silently, since the new Pharaoh was still mourning his father, and the silent support meant much to him. The reason Atem was heading for the training grounds was because the rest of his family was likely to be there, and he wanted to see them.

At the outdoor training yard, he stopped to watch curiously as two separate matches were going on, one between a sixteen-year-old boy and a man of about thirty-five, and another between a swordswoman of about forty, a Mage of about thirty, and a girl of about eleven. While the match between the boy and man was impressive, the match between the two women and the girl was ten times that, and he found himself grateful for both the night he'd chosen to bear Kai and for that night when he'd chosen to bear a second child.

Now, the brown haired, blue eyed man stood his ground as he used his sword with incredible skill from a stationary position. The boy with red and blond highlighted brown, flyaway hair and pale indigo eyes, on the other hand, was as active and energetic as the most restless chimpanzee. He couldn't have stayed still if his life depended on it, and if he was told to run circles around the Palace or City Walls from dawn until dusk, not only could he do it without stopping for anything more than his meals, but he could easily out-run all the guards, and more, he was _happy_ to do it. Martial arts training and running messages had been the only things which had given him an outlet for his energy when he'd been young, so he had thrown himself into them and become a force to be reckoned with—only his 'mother' he couldn't defeat, and only rarely his 'father'.

"Come on, Kai, I'm not even able to do any more than defend, and yet, you can't defeat me?" the man challenged the sixteen-year-old.

"I wouldn't want to hurt you, Father," the boy replied easily with an impish grin.

"No, no, that's no good," Seto replied, sighing in pity. "In a real battle to defend the city, you can't afford to be so selective. Now, put more effort in! I know you can reach me, since you've done so before."

"Ha..." Kai agreed with a wry grin—then pulled a dive and roll stunt which put him behind the man and gave him a clear shot at his lower back. He froze as the sword point pressed into the leather jerkin his father wore, then lowered it and rose as he said, "It's been over a month since I got a shot in. How you can be so strong with a bad leg, I'll never be able to fathom, Father."

A large flare drew all eyes to the three women, the oldest of which crouched outside the circle of flames. When the fire cleared, the older Mage and the younger girl were standing there calmly, unharmed by the fire, the older of whom looked wryly amused. The swordswoman, a blond haired, blue eyed beauty and Captain of the Palace Guard, rose to face the two others, and the Mage, a brown-haired woman with a gold band around her head, took a few steps back from the girl.

As for the girl, she had long, red-tipped black hair, the top section of which was rather flyaway and flipped back from her face with a curl, and her eyes were sapphire-crimson, even as her skin was nearly as bronzy as Atem's own. She dressed in a knee-length Mage's robe, but wore a leather jerkin and knee-high, leather boots and archer's armguards. Rather than just carrying a sword or a mace, staff, or wand, she used a weapon unique to her, designed by the weaponsmiths when they found she used weapons and magic equally as well. It was a staff with the ability to remove the ends to reveal two slender sword blades, and which could also separate in the middle to become two swords or two maces, and she currently held one sword and one mace. Her other weapon, a bow, sat against a support pillar near where Atem and Mahad stood.

"All right, Aria, you have to stop holding back like that, or you won't be able to negate the effects of the spells properly," the Mage scolded the girl gently.

She pouted and replied, "What if I don't want to _waste_ the power and energy it takes to completely negate it? Don't try to tell me there's no difference, because I tested it with Priest Mahad, and I found a _big_ difference. When it's just me or a couple people who can move into my personal shield, I use _a lot_ less energy just to deflect the most dangerous parts."

"You're never going to get a genius like her to do the task 'properly' if she's found a better or more practical way to do it, Mana," the swordswoman called dryly.

"There's nothing _proper_ about _wasting_ valuable energy! You agree with me, don't you, Mother?" Aria called to Atem, who laughed in spite of himself.

"Aria, there are times and places for that," he called back to her. "Yes, there are many real situations where you would be absolutely correct. However, you _train_ by doing the things with the most _taxing_ requirements so you can _build up_ your strength, reserves, and endurance, not so you can learn to use the _least_ amount of power, thereby preventing your reserves and endurance, in particular, from growing. As such, you _do_ 'waste' energy when you train. Please follow your instructor's instructions, little daughter mine."

"Aw..." she pouted. "...Fine..."

With her agreement, the match resumed, even as the one eleven-year-old girl dodged, shielded against, and attacked with both skilled swordsmanship and high magic. Every boom and blast was more impressive than the last as she manipulated both forces equally and with unprecedented power and skill. Atem's skills were highly impressive as things stood, but Aria's outmatched his in everything but real combat and life experience, and he was sure it wouldn't be long before she'd exceed him. Frankly, he didn't mind it, since she was also a much more responsible sort than her brother, and often kept Kai in line by the simple fact that she could beat _him_ in a fair fight, but it still meant _real_ logic was the only way to keep _her_ in line.

A few minutes later, Mai was thrown back outside the practice circle, and a minute later, Mana freed herself from a funnel of conjured water, then knelt in surrender. The match was over as Aria gave a cheer, thanked the two women, then ran over to hug Atem eagerly.

"Mother, Captain Mai said she would see if one of the patrol units would take me with them, just on a short patrol into the Nile area! She said something about it being better if I go like that than go off on my own and get myself captured like you did. But Mother, you were never captured, were you?" the girl asked rapidly, making her 'mother' go cross-eyed.

"Aria...I was only Kai's age when I was captured by the enemy..." he told her in mild amusement.

She blinked, then blinked again, then let him go and asked, "You were with the enemy when Kai was born?"

Atem held a hand to his head as Seto, Mai, and Mana laughed and Mahad said tiredly, "Princess Aria, your 'father' was the one who held him captive, in more ways than one, and who helped him escape three months before the Crown Prince was born. You were born under much more pleasant conditions."

For over a full minute, she fell silent, blinking as she compared it silently to the rest of the data she knew about the situation, then said slowly, "So...Mother left the Palace by transforming, joined a scouting group, and they were attacked by Father and his people, and Mother was taken to their first homeland?"

"Pharaoh Atem, your daughter's capacity for putting details together never ceases to amaze me..." Mai told him in amusement.

"Frankly, it never ceases to amaze me, either," the man replied in amusement. He then met Aria's gaze and admitted, "That's an acceptable short version, yes."

Kai chose that moment to call, "Mother, I'm going to run some messages for the guards!" He was gone a moment later, and Atem held a hand to his head again.

Seto joined him, placing a hand on his shoulder as he said, "At least he's staying in the city now, so he can't get kidnapped easily, and the amount of time he spent running through there as a kid means everyone knows him on sight." He sounded amused.

"_Where_ he gets so much energy from, I can't fathom," the younger of the two sighed. "We may be exemplary examples to combine, but these two have us beat by a mile."

"Like you said, 'peace and quiet' would be the _last_ thing we'd have by putting our blood together," Seto chuckled. He then asked, "Are you holding up all right, yourself, Atem? Your father's death was hard on you."

"I'm just...a little nostalgic, that's all," the younger man replied with a small, sad smile. "I'll be fine. Beside, Kai and Aria wouldn't let me mourn for long."

"Of course not! You're our Mother, after all, and we still need you," Aria told him dryly, making Seto choke and Atem chuckle in spite of himself.

"Thank you, Aria," her 'mother' told her, giving the girl a hug.

Atem knew it would be all right, since he had his lover and two wonderful children to keep him from getting too depressed, so smiled and sent a silent thanks to Ra for everything he had done for them.

From somewhere far away and removed from time, an echoing sound like 'you're welcome' reached Atem's ears.


End file.
